Launching apps silently?

[sirugo]

How do I lanuch another app from my java-app?

I want to launch both Explorer and Firefox silently in the background and give them both the same URL, let's say

http://www.google.com

After that I want the both browsers to terminate their activity.

Can it be done?
How?

 

[timw]

Well, you can use the Runtime class's exec() method to run command lines in the environment. I don't know if IE or Firefox can be launched 'silently'. They are designed to interact with the user and I'd expect they'd present a visible GUI pretty much as a given.

Maybe you have deeper requirements which makes you ask this question? If you want to invisiblty process pages from a web server you could use sockets to get at it, or use the higher-level java.net.HttpURLConnection class, or even an Open Source library such as the Apache Commons HttpClient.

Tim

 

[Diancecht]

As tim said, more information is needed. My first thought is that what you need is not a Java program but a batch file.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[sirugo]

OK, this is exactly what I'm doing.

Originally I have a C++ app that takes the username logged on to a Novell net. It creates a hash of the username and launches Explorer at a given URL which stores a cookie with the hash. This hash is used to look up the user in a database for an intranet which makes the user automatically logged in to that intranet.
Now this works perfectly with C++ and Explorer launches silently in the background with ShellExecute and the SW_HIDE parameter.
Also the C++ app launches Firefox but it won't do it silently which gives me a headache. I don't understand why it works with Explorer and not with Firefox.
Also I tried to close Firefox using window.close with Javascript but that gives me an annoying popup.

That's why I tried to see if there is a better way to do this with Java.

 

[Diancecht]

Well, some thoughts:

1.- If it works with IE, why Firefox?

2.- Maybe command line arguments for FireFox, setting the size to 0:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments

3.- Back to Java, maybe opening an HttpUrlConnection is enough.

Cheers,
Dian

 

[sirugo]

Because the users use both Explorer and Firefox and the Explorer-cookie won't be available to Firefox.
So I must do it for both applications to have the users logged in automatically no matter which browser they're using.