How can I open a local folder view by clicking on a link

[meett9325076]

Hello All,

Is there any way to open a local folder (file explorer not a file chooser) from a link in a premiere pro panel? Is this possible using cep API?

Premiere Pro version: 11.1.0

Extension Type: Panel

Thanks & Regards,
Meet Tank

[e_d_ · Accepted solution]

Yes. (If I was trying to be cheeky I'd stop right here.)

I do it like so:

Win:

window.cep.process.createProcess('C:\\Windows\\explorer.exe','yourAbsoluteFolderPathAsString')

Mac:

window.cep.process.createProcess('/usr/bin/open','yourAbsoluteFolderPathAsString')

[meett9325076]

Thanks e.d.​ I am trying to replace the windows folder path by the environment variable as below:

window.cep.process.createProcess('%WINDIR%\\explorer.exe','yourAbsoluteFolderPathAsString')

But that didn't work. Could you please help me to achieve this?

Thanks,
Meet

[e_d_]

Hey Meet,

for some reason unknown to me (and so far not explained by the CEF/CEP guys), you have to provide absolute paths. System environment variables will not work direclty AFAIK, they do not seem to get expanded.

In ExtendScript you would use $.getenv("WINDIR") , but how that would be solved in JS+CEP, I don't know (yet).

[meett9325076]

Thank you e.d.​ It is very useful.

Thanks,
Meet

[sberic]

meett9325076​, if you're willing to enable the NodeJS context in your panel, you could do the following:

var process = require('process');
var path = require('path');
var basePath = process.env.WINDIR;
if (basePath !== undefined)
{
    var path = basePath + path.sep + "explorer.exe";
    window.cep.process.createProcess(path, 'yourAbsoluteFolderPathAsString');
}
else
{
    // Handle with fallback or error.
}

See the NodeJS documentation for process.env for more.

How you handle the paths and error conditions is, of course, up to you!

[edit2j47225339]

Hi, should this method still work? I'm trying this on a mac with this line:

window.cep.process.createProcess('/usr/bin/open','Volumes/.../90834_Render_Log.txt');

I took away part of the path for securty reasons. When I try to run this within my CEP panel it gives me the error 'window is not defined'. Do I need to do something to define 'window'?

EDIT: I figured it out. I had put the code in the premiere.jsx but it needs to be in the index.html. It works now.