Running applications

This page describes how to run other programs from your chrome JavaScript code, using Mozilla XPCOM interfaces. There are two ways to run programs.

Using nsIProcess

The recommended way is to use the nsIProcess interface because it is crossplatform.

Using nsILocalFile.launch()

This method has the same effect as if you double-clicked the file, so for executable files—it will just run the file without any parameters.

For more information on nsIFile/nsILocalFile, see File I/O.

var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"]
                     .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
file.initWithPath("c:\\myapp.exe");
file.launch();

References

• nsIProcess
• nsILocalFile
• If you need to launch an executable bundled in your XPI, see Code snippets:File I/O#Getting your extension's folder.
• Launching an executable process from a web page