How do I open an URL from a bash script?

Question

I have a simple script to start a node.js webserver and open the URL in a browser. However the last part doesn't seem to work, it wont open the URL in a browser (or anywhere else).

This is the code I got so far:

#!/bin/bash
node server.js;
xdg-open http://localhost:9000/;

Everywhere I search I find the same, I have to use:

xdg-open URL

but it only seems to work while typing that in the terminal, not in my startserver.sh file. It will start the server but not open the URL, typing the code in a terminal however does seem to work.

It's confusing, why doesn't it work inside my script?

Solution 1

xdg-open is actually a shell script (on my system). It uses heuristics to guess what your browser is. You could see what it is trying to do by running it with from within the script with

sh -x xdg-open http://localhost:9000/ >&/tmp/errors

Look in /tmp/errors for any failure messages. You may also simply replace xdg-open by the name of your browser, eg firefox.

If you are launching a script from a desktop button, it may be that when the launcher gets to the end of the script, it kills the process group. Try adding a

 sleep 99999

at the end to see if this is the case.

If you are trying to run your startserver.sh from somewhere other than your desktop environment, xdg-open may have a hard time trying to find which browser to use. You could try setting some environment variables to help it.

Solution 2

It's a very short answer, start node server.js as background process:

#!/bin/bash
node server.js &
xdg-open http://localhost:9000/

Comments

[muru]

How are you running the script?

[steeldriver]

It may just be a timing issue (attempting to open the URL before the server has fully started) - try adding a sleep 2 or sleep 5 between the two commands.

[Wouter]

I tried with sleep but I still have the same problem. How I run the script? I configured it so that I double-click the file it will ask me what to do, then I 'Run it in terminal'. I do want a terminal window to open and stay open as long as the server is running, which is not a problem. I tried just the xdg-open without starting the node server, also with other urls but it simply doesn't work.

[s3lph]

If xdg-open really doesn't work (which would surprise me), try x-www-browser URL. This will open the URL in the default browser

[j0h]

Is opening it in firefox acceptable? How about thought nautilus or caja?