Clean way to launch the web browser from shell script?
BashShellCommand LineStandardsStandards ComplianceBash Problem Overview
In a bash script, I need to launch the user web browser. There seems to be many ways of doing this:
$BROWSERxdg-opengnome-openon GNOMEwww-browserx-www-browser- ...
Is there a more-standard-than-the-others way to do this that would work on most platforms, or should I just go with something like this:
#/usr/bin/env bash
if [ -n $BROWSER ]; then
$BROWSER 'http://wwww.google.com'
elif which xdg-open > /dev/null; then
xdg-open 'http://wwww.google.com'
elif which gnome-open > /dev/null; then
gnome-open 'http://wwww.google.com'
# elif bla bla bla...
else
echo "Could not detect the web browser to use."
fi
Bash Solutions
Solution 1 - Bash
python -mwebbrowser http://example.com
works on many platforms
Solution 2 - Bash
xdg-open is standardized and should be available in most distributions.
Otherwise:
evalis evil, don't use it.- Quote your variables.
- Use the correct test operators in the correct way.
Here is an example:
#!/bin/bash
if which xdg-open > /dev/null
then
xdg-open URL
elif which gnome-open > /dev/null
then
gnome-open URL
fi
Maybe this version is slightly better (still untested):
#!/bin/bash
URL=$1
[[ -x $BROWSER ]] && exec "$BROWSER" "$URL"
path=$(which xdg-open || which gnome-open) && exec "$path" "$URL"
echo "Can't find browser"
Solution 3 - Bash
OSX:
$ open -a /Applications/Safari.app http://www.google.com
or
$ open -a /Applications/Firefox.app http://www.google.com
or simply...
$ open some_url
Solution 4 - Bash
You could use the following:
x-www-browser
It won't run the user's but rather the system's default X browser.
See: this thread.
Solution 5 - Bash
Taking the other answers and making a version that works for all major OS's as well as checking to ensure that a URL is passed in as a run-time variable:
#!/bin/bash
if [ -z $1 ]; then
echo "Must run command with the url you want to visit."
exit 1
else
URL=$1
fi
[[ -x $BROWSER ]] && exec "$BROWSER" "$URL"
path=$(which xdg-open || which gnome-open) && exec "$path" "$URL"
if open -Ra "safari" ; then
echo "VERIFIED: 'Safari' is installed, opening browser..."
open -a safari "$URL"
else
echo "Can't find any browser"
fi
Solution 6 - Bash
This may not apply exactly to what you want to do, but there is a really easy way to create and launch a server using the http-server npm package.
Once installed (just npm install http-server -g) you can put
http-server -o
in your bash script and it will launch a server from the current directory and open a browser to that page.