Opener

Opener is a Ruby library for opening things in an cross-platform way.

It is a tiny (28 lines of code) alternative to Ruby's launchy gem.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'opener'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install opener

Load this library:

require 'opener'

Open something in the foreground (blocking call):

Opener.system(thing_to_open_in_foreground)

Open something in the foreground while suppressing output:

Opener.system(thing_to_open_in_foreground, 1 => :close)

Open something in the foreground while suppressing errors:

Opener.system(thing_to_open_in_foreground, 2 => :close)

Open something in the background (non-blocking call):

Opener.spawn(thing_to_open_in_background)

Open something in the background while suppressing output:

Opener.spawn(thing_to_open_in_background, 1 => :close)

Open something in the background while suppressing errors:

Opener.spawn(thing_to_open_in_background, 2 => :close)

Reveal the OS-specific command that is opening things:

puts Opener.command()

This library is distributed under the same terms as Ruby: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/about/license.txt