The OpenExternal Activity opens an external document or executable file, also using optional arguments.
Description
| Open External | |
|---|---|
| Name | OpenExternal |
| Purpose | Open an external document or executable file |
| Category | UBIK File Primitives |
| Returns | success of opening the file |
| Version | 2.4+ |
Arguments
| Argument | Type | Direction | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| FileName | String | In | The path to the executable or the document file. |
| Arguments | String | In | Additional arguments (optional, used to pass arguments for executable files). |
| WorkingDirectory | String | In | Working directory (optional, used to specify a working directory for executable files). This value is only used in combination with executable files. |
| TimeOut | Integer | In | Time out value in seconds (optional, to wait for a maximum amount of time for the invoked process to finish). Leaving this value empty or setting it to 0 means that the workflow continues execution immediately, otherwise the specified amount of seconds will be spent waiting for the process to finish. |
| Result | Boolean | Out | true if process successfully finished, false if not |
Usage
The activity is used to open file documents or executable files during the execution of a workflow. It can be used to open and show documents like Excel files, JPG pictures etc but also to execute a batch file if needed.
 | Opening any (proprietary) document type requires that a corresponding application is available on the machine, for example Microsoft Office for an Excel document. |
Examples
Open an Excel document
Show the Excel file E:\Results.xlsx:
| Argument | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| string | FileName | "E:\Results.xlsx" |
Open image file with explicit application
Show the graphics image file E:\Graph.jpg with a certain image viewer application that allows to pass the additional command line argument "/clipcopy" which copies the loaded picture to the clipboard. Therefore, the needed arguments are simply separated by space characters, consisting of the image file path and the additional argument.
| Argument | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| string | FileName | "C:\Program Files (x86)\IrfanView\i_view32.exe" |
| string | Arguments | "E:\Graph.jpg /clipcopy" |
Open image file with default application
Alternatively to the previous example, showing the image E:\Graph.jpg with it's system default application can simply be done by specifying it's document path as the file name.
| Argument | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| string | FileName | "E:\Graph.jpg" |
Execute a batch file with command line arguments
Another use case could be executing batch files. We have a batch file E:\ProcessData.bat that processes the data of the text file MyData.csv in the working directory "E:\". If there is a problem we want to specify a timeout of 30 seconds for this processing step to avoid blocking the workflow for a long time.
This can be done by defining the following arguments:
| Argument | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| string | FileName | "E:\ProcessData.bat" |
| string | Arguments | "E:\MyData.csv" |
| string | WorkingDirectory | "E:\" |
| string | TimeOut | 30 |