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widominCommunity Member

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How to run external application

Nov 3, 2008 3:48 PM

How could I call an external application like an exe file in Windows.
I read the Adobe AIR Language Reference for HTML Developers, but don' t know if it is possible.
Thanks.

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ilsh,

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Nov 3, 2008 5:21 PM

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Not possible under AIR 1.1.

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widomin,

Community Member

Nov 4, 2008 3:35 AM

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Thanks ilsh.
Could I have an java applet, or activex in one html, to do that?.

Now I do this with a service listening to an specific port parsing parameterized commands, and calling a socket service from my AIR application, but i don´t like to do in that way.

Thanks another time.
(sorry my poor english)

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widomin,

Community Member

Nov 5, 2008 10:25 AM

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Any other could help me?
...

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ilsh,

Community Member

Nov 5, 2008 10:58 AM

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sorry widomin, my knowledge is not enough to answer your question ...

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widomin,

Community Member

Nov 5, 2008 3:26 PM

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Thanks ilsh. I still do it with a service.

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ilsh,

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Nov 5, 2008 3:39 PM

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Hi, widomin. I am very interested in how you can launch external programs with a service. Can you point to me where I can find more information on this topic ?

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widomin,

Community Member

Nov 5, 2008 4:09 PM

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Well,
I make a socket service listening to a port (an exe program written in C#).
It waits for somone, listening for a command.
From air, y make the connection to this port and parse the command like this:

socket = new air.Socket();
socket.addEventListener( air.Event.CONNECT, onSocketOpen );
socket.addEventListener( air.ProgressEvent.SOCKET_DATA,
onSocketData );
socket.connect( 'localhost', 5050 );

function onSocketOpen( event )
{
socket.writeUTFBytes( "c:\windows\calc.exe" ); <<-- send command
socket.flush();
}

function onSocketData( event ){
var data = socket.readUTFBytes( socket.bytesAvailable );
socket.close();
}

When the air connect to the server in the port 5050, send the command. (onSocketOpen)
The server then execute what we send, because is out of the air domains.
Understand?

Allways you could do it by installing a Apache, IIS, and make a .asp, or .php, or any other that could execute external commands.
If you install or just have installed Apache is more easy and robust that make a simple server like I do.
But I like to complicate my life, and don´t want a web server installed.

I hope this can serve to you as well.
Widomin

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ilsh,

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Nov 6, 2008 12:03 AM

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Thanks, widomin. It's very helpful.

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PrashanthHegde,

Community Member

Apr 24, 2009 8:00 PM

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Hi All

Is there any other techniques (other than Socket) exist in AIR to run/load an external application?

Thanks in Advance
Prashanth Hegde

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Christian Cantrell,

Adobe Employee

Apr 24, 2009 9:41 PM

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Prashanth,

There is currently no supported way to launch external processes with AIR. I won't say that you can't since just about anything is possible with enough ingenuity, but it's not supported.

This is a feature that we see a lot of requests for and that we are currently investigating for a future version of AIR.

Thanks,
Christian

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kamran_BAE,

Nov 2, 2009 3:27 AM

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What I would have done is to develop C#/VB .net application that would run my desired executable. I would have deployed this application as Click Once deployment withan option to take in the querystring parameters.

for example:

http://myserver/external.application?param1=calc.exe

I would have executed the above from within adobe flex, which then would have downloaded the C#/VB .net application and would have executed your desired application, in this case calc.exe. (ofcourse in C#/VB .net application above I would have invoked calc.exe to run). So all in all I would have wrapped the call of calc.exe in my custom C#/VB .net application.

thanks

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scholarpack,

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Nov 2, 2009 1:44 PM

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This of any help?

http://aperture.fluorinefx.com/?page_id=2

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badoumba,

Nov 23, 2009 7:30 AM

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Seems that Air 2.0 does not allow to open a precise application, just a existing file and its
default application in Windows.

What kind of socket connexion do we have to make. Is there some code or exemple somewhere, I don't have enouth knowledge to do that myself from scratch.

Thanks in advance.

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tzeng,

Adobe Employee

Nov 23, 2009 10:18 AM

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AIR 2 does alow you to launch a specific application.
See an example here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/interacting_with_nativ e_process_02.html

-ted

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badoumba,

Community Member

Nov 23, 2009 1:39 PM

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ok!

Thanks ted. This helps a lot of course!

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