Customizing the Operations Console Menu › How to Customize the Operations Console Menu › Specify an Action to Perform › Launch an Application

Launch an Application

The <launch-application> element lets you start a command or program.

<command> Element

The <command> element specifies the command or program to run. You can provide the path to the command or program in one of the following ways:

Environment variable

In a Solaris environment use the PATH variable. To create an environment variable on Windows, right-click My Computer, select Properties and Advanced, and click the Environment Variables button.

Absolute path

The path must be the same on each CA SOI client. Path statements on Windows should have a double backslash instead of a single backslash, for example:

C:\\Windows\\system32\\cmd.exe

The following syntax rules apply to the <command> element:

• Spaces delimit command arguments.
• Spaces in an argument are surrounded by quotation marks or preceded by the backslash escape character (\).
• Quotation marks in an argument are preceded by the backslash escape character (\).
• CA SOI automatically surrounds command arguments that contain commas with quotation marks, which is important to know if you parse a numeric argument that contains commas.
• CA SOI replaces arguments that return null or have a string length of zero with empty quotation marks (“ ”).

<validate> Element

The <validate> element verifies that the command or program exists on the client and has run permissions. If either of these conditions is not met during startup, the associated menu item is not added to the menu.

If the <validate> element is not used, the menu item is always added to the menu, but its state is determined by the value of other elements.

The <validate> element requires an absolute path in the <command> element, as shown in the following example:

<launch-application>
   command>c:\\windows\\system32\\notepad.exe</command>
   <validate/>
</launch-application>

Examples: Launch an Application

The following are two examples for launching an application:

• This example launches an application called myapp on the client machine and passes the IP address of the selected model. As with the <launch-browser> action, you can substitute any number of parameters.

     <launch-application>
        <command>myapp {0}</command>
        <param>
           <attribute>AttributeID.NETWORK_ADDRESS</attribute>
        </param>
     </launch-application>
  

• This example uses the <platform> element to specify commands for different platforms. The <os-name> element specifies the operating system name and the <command> element specifies the command to run on that operating system. The <os-name> element is optional. If you do not specify <os-name>, the associated command is the default such that if no other platforms match, the default command runs.

     <launch-application>
        <platform>
           <os-name>Windows</os-name>
           <command>cmd.exe /c start "ping {0}" cmd /c "ping.exe {0}
           &amp;&amp;pause"</command>
        </platform>
        <platform>
           <os-name>SunOS</os-name>
           <command>>/usr/dt/bin/dtterm -e ping {0}</command>
        </platform>
        <param>
           <attribute>AttributeID.NETWORK_ADDRESS</attribute>
        </param>
     </launch-application>
  

  At runtime, the specified OS names are compared to the OS name returned by the os.name Java property. A best-match algorithm lets you specify only a prefix of the OS name. The following are valid OS names:

  • SunOS for the Solaris platform
  • Windows for all Windows platforms
  • Windows 9x for Windows 95/98
  • Windows 2000 for Windows 2000
  • Windows 2003 for Windows 2003
  • Windows XP for Windows XP
  • Windows Vista for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
  • Linux for the Linux platform
  • Mac for the Macintosh platform

  If no specified platforms match, the associated menu item is disabled.