I got tired of asking for more information in bug reports in the Costello editor, so I figured I'd put in a link to automatically post to the mailing list with the user's environment info. It would also help direct all traffic of that sort to the proper place, rather than having some people post to forums, some to the mailing list, or others filing bug reports or RFEs (even when they're just asking a question).
You'd think that eons after the introduction of email and bug reports and that sort of thing it'd take no more than a line of code, but alas, not so for java. And I certainly don't want to introduce yet another library dependency. So I says to meself, how hard can it be? I mean, OSX already gives you a nice "open" command to launch something appropriate for whatever argument you give it (so much faster than digging through folders, too). Windows has the "start" command, and it's easy enough to pass an arbitrary script to /bin/sh for any *nix variants. So I set off to get my Runtime.exec on...
Check out the landscape
First off, someone on the Apple java-dev list suggested throwing a mailto: URL at the "open" command.
% open mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net
% open 'mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net?subject=bug report&body=java version'
open[]: No such file mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net?subject=bug report
(For you *nix newbies, an ampersand is normally interpreted by the shell as direction to start the preceding command as a background process, thus the single quotes are required. When we stuff this into Runtime.exec, we can drop the quotes because Runtime.exec doesn't use the shell)
% open 'mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net?subject=bug%20report&body=java%20version'
Over to w32 now, and see if "start" works the same way. I normally use bash on windows, but this test wants to be in the Windows command shell.
% cmd.exe
c:\> start mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net?subject=bug%20report&body=java%20version
'body' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
c:\> start "mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net?subject=bug%20report&body=java%20version"
c:> start /help
c:> start /?
c:> start "title" "mailto:abbot-users@lists.sf.net?subject=bug%20report&body=java%20version"
Write up a TestCase
I'd previously written a simple exec handler that would capture all the program output and error streams, so I'll use that here. I'm not concerned with the output (I don't expect any) and only want to throw up an error if the command somehow fails. So write up a little JUnit test case for it, let's call it the LauncherTest. I've rigged the test to only run if I invoke it manually; since it requires user interaction to get rid of the launched processes, I'd rather it not run with the rest of the automated suite. Writing the test case makes me think about exactly how I'd like to use this thing. Namely, I just want to send a post to the support mailing list with a prepared body. And to make sure I don't get any lame "Help!" subject lines, might as well fill that in as well. I just want to invoke a single line of code to preformat an email. Fill in the target address, subject, and sample body. No need for a complex API.
package abbot.util;
import junit.framework.*;
public class LauncherTest extends TestCase {
// only run these tests manually, since we can't control the launched apps automatically
private static boolean run = false;
public void testMailTo() throws Exception {
if (!run)
return;
String SUBJECT = "subject";
String BODY = "body";
Launcher.mail("abbot-users@lists.sf.net", SUBJECT, BODY);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
run = true;
junit.textui.TestRunner.main(new String[] { "-c", LauncherTest.class.getName() });
}
}
Make the TestCase work
Now, whipping out my trusty Runtime.exec wrapper, I simply wrap up the tricks I was playing in the console.
package abbot.util;
import java.net.URLEncoder;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.io.IOException;
import abbot.Log;
import abbot.Platform;
/** Mail and browser launcher which augments Runtime.exec()
* functions. Provides for built-in email and web browser support.
*/
public class Launcher {
/** Sort of URL-encode the given string. */
public static String encode(String s) {
// simple implementation for now
return s;
}
/** Format a message to the given user with the given subject and message
body, including CC and BCC lists. */
public static void mail(String user, String subject, String body) throws IOException {
StringBuffer mailto = new StringBuffer("mailto:" + user + "?");
mailto.append("Subject=" + encode(subject)
+ "&" + "Body=" + encode(body) + "");
open(mailto.toString());
}
/** Use the given command/program to open the given target. */
public static void open(String command, String target) throws IOException {
ArrayList args = new ArrayList();
if (Platform.isOSX()) {
args.add("open");
}
else if (Platform.isWindows()) {
// Probably won't work on win9x, but just in case
args.add(Platform.isWindows9X()
? "command.com" : "cmd.exe");
args.add("/c");
args.add("start");
args.add("\"Title\"");
// Always quote the argument, just in case
// See MS docs for cmd.exe; &, |, and () must be escaped with
// ^ or double-quoted. semicolon and comma are command
// argument separators, and probably require quoting as well.
target = "\"" + target + "\"";
}
else {
throw new Error("Not done yet!");
}
args.add(target);
String[] cmd = (String[])args.toArray(new String[args.size()]);
String output = ProcessOutputHandler.exec(cmd);
}
}
Add just the features I need
So far, so good. Now I want a little more complex subject and body. First, adjust the test to use more representative values:
String SUBJECT = "with spaces";
String BODY = "with spaces and <[special % characters]>";
public static String encode(String s) {
return URLEncoder.encode(s);
}
Running the test we find that OSX's Mail will decode %20 but not '+', and URLEncoder.encode(String) turns spaces into '+'. So we need to pre-escape spaces, then replace them with the proper %20 encoding. What about w32? Outlook won't handle either encoding, but it will accept the spaces directly. So we immediately add a test for the encoding:
public void testEncoding() {
String[][] strings = {
{ "with space", Platform.isOSX() ? "with%20space" : "with space" },
//TODO check encoding of other characters
};
for(int i=0;i < strings.length;i++) {
assertEquals("Wrong string encoding for '" + strings[i][0] + "'", strings[i][1], Launcher.encode(strings[i][0]));
}
}
testEncoding() test properly fails, on we go to code up a proper solution.
public static String encode(String s) {
StringBuffer buf = new StringBuffer(s);
// Avoid URLEncoder.encode for spaces; it replaces them with plus
// signs, which remain pluses when decoded.
String SPACE = "--SPACE--";
for (int idx = buf.toString().indexOf(" ");
idx != -1;idx = buf.toString().indexOf(" ")) {
Buf.replace(idx, idx+1, SPACE);
}
buf = new StringBuffer(URLEncoder.encode(buf.toString()));
for (int idx = buf.toString().indexOf(SPACE);
idx != -1;idx = buf.toString().indexOf(SPACE)) {
if (Platform.isOSX()) {
// The "open" command parses spaces
buf.replace(idx, idx + SPACE.length(), "%20");
}
else {
buf.replace(idx, idx + SPACE.length(), " ");
}
}
return buf.toString();
}
You can stop coding now
Hoo-rah. Success on both OSX and Windows. The subject and body show up with exactly the strings I passed in. Now I just do the Launcher.mail invocation in response to a menu selection, and no more asking for more basic information!
I'll publish the finished Launcher code in the next installment.
