Re: Opening a foreign file from Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg78862] Re: Opening a foreign file from Mathematica
- From: David Reiss <dbreiss at gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:15:40 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <f6vnng$qj7$1@smc.vnet.net>
Steve,
I am not sure that I completely understand the question here, but let
me phrase a question, answer it, and perhaps it will give you an
answer. Or you can rephrase things so that we can go through an
iteration [contact me off-group if you want to].
So here's a question. I have a notebook, and within it I want to
place a function that I can execute to open a file that is on some
known path **relative** to that notebook's path. And I want this
function to work if I copy the notebook and the file to somewhere else
but maintain their directory relationship.
Let's say that the notebook is in some directory that has as its full
file path, dir, and that the file, which I will call "foo.other", is
in a subdirectory, "subdir", of dir. (Of course dir is a string.)
Given this, the full filepath to "foo.other" is
ToFileName[{dir, "subdir"}, "foo.other"]
The remaining question is then how do we find out what dir is (I
assume that we know what the name "subdir" is, but there are ways of
discovering that as well--I will comment on that below).
Within the notebook (assuming that it is saved on disk--this will not
make sense if it doesn't exist on disk of course) if I execute the
following I will get the value of dir
dir = DirectoryName[ToFileName["FileName" /. NotebookInformation[]]]
So, the path to the file "foo.other" is now
filepath =
ToFileName[{DirectoryName[ToFileName["FileName" /.
NotebookInformation[]]],
"subdir"}, "foo.other"]
There is one further little bit that is needed to make the approach
that I am outlining cross-platform. The function that one would now
use to open the file in its default application would be
NotebookLocate[{URL[fileLink], None}]. However, how the value of
fileLink (which I haven't specified yet) is built from the value of
filepath depends on the operating system that you are using. If it is
Windows then fileLink = filepath; if it is MacOS X, then it is
fileLink = "file://" <> filepath. I believe that this is true for
other Unix systems as well. (This is one of the things that is done
inside of the function OpenFileOrDirectory in "A WorkLIfeFrameWork").
So, finally, if I execute (I put this in a Module, only to show the
different pieces of the code nicely)
Catch@Module[{filepath, fileLink},
dir = DirectoryName[ToFileName["FileName" /.
NotebookInformation[]]];
filepath = ToFileName[{dir, "another"}, "example.txt"];
Which[
StringMatchQ[$System, "Mac OS X*"],
fileLink = "file://" <> filepath,
StringMatchQ[$System, "Microsoft Windows*"],
fileLink = filepath,
StringMatchQ[$System, "Linux" | "Unix"],
fileLink = "file://" <> filepath,
True,
Throw[$Failed]
];
NotebookLocate[{URL[fileLink], None}]
]
then this will open up the file "foo.other" in its default
application.
A couple of comments.
One: if "foo.other" is in a directory that contains dir then we'd have
to shuffle this code around a bit
Two: if we know that "foo.other" is in a subdirectory of dir, but
don't know which subdirectory it is in, we could "discover" where it
is (assuming that there is only one "foo.other") by looking at the
output of
FileNames[{ToFileName["*", "foo.other"]} {dir}, n]
where n is some sensible modest value.
So, to summarize, aside from the cross platform detail dealt with by
the Which statement above, the key thing in all of this is to (1) find
out where the notebook that this is executed is by suing
NotebookInformation, (2) to use commands to create a file path using
ToFileName, and (3) to use NotebookLocate in the form
NotebookLocate[{URL[fileLink], None}]
I hope that this helps...
--David
A WorkLife FrameWork
E x t e n d i n g MATHEMATICA's Reach...
http://scientificarts.com/worklife
Compatible with Mathematica 6
On Jul 10, 6:40 am, "Steve Luttrell"
<steve at _removemefirst_luttrell.org.uk> wrote:
> Yes, that reads "from" not "in" Mathematica. Several years ago I asked in
> this forum how to create a hyperlink in a Mathematica notebook that when
> clicked would open a file in its associated application, thus emulating the
> effect of double-clicking on the file (at least in MS Windows, that is).
> Here is (part of) a response to that:
>
> =======================================
> Working in Windows I guess you should not have any problems in doing this.
> Just create a normal hyperlink button, but set the ButtonData to:
>
> {URL["fullfilename"], None}
>
> where, fullfilename is the full path to the file you want to
> open (with backslashes doubled as is normal in Mathematica strings).
>
> An example cell expression which might open a Word document:
>
> Cell[BoxData[
> ButtonBox["test",
> ButtonData:>{
> URL[ "C:\\temp\\foo.doc"], None},
> ButtonStyle->"Hyperlink"]], "Input"]
> =======================================
>
> This worked perfectly which is why I kept the code snippet for future use,
> but I somehow lost the name of whoever wrote this response.
>
> I have always been frustrated that the full path to the file was needed in
> this approach, because this locked down the notebook/file pair to a single
> place in the filesystem, and this approach broke even if you subsequently
> changed only the name of (i.e. letter assigned to) your hard drive. Many of
> my past links have been broken in this way. This is not ideal.
>
> I have tried the obvious approach to using relative paths:
>
> SetDirectory[NotebookDirectory[]]
>
> Cell[BoxData[
> ButtonBox["test",
> ButtonData:>{
> URL[ ".\\temp\\foo.doc"], None},
> ButtonStyle->"Hyperlink"]], "Input"]
>
> which I hoped would work from a notebook stored at the top level of C: (in
> this example), but unfortunately it doesn't work.
>
> So, the question is how to generalise this so that you can use paths
> relative to the notebook.
>
> --
> Steve Luttrell
> West Malvern, UK