Use new UI event to send a putative path to the system for opening #877

jennybc · 2025-07-19T02:48:54Z

Addresses posit-dev/positron#5486
Companion to posit-dev/positron#8588
Surfaced by r-lib/usethis#2126

In particular, I'm thinking of expanding `~`, i.e. the home directory

jennybc · 2025-07-19T02:57:47Z

crates/ark/src/browser.rs

-    // TODO: What is the right thing to do outside of Positron when
-    // `options(browser =)` is called? Right now we error.


Does anyone want me to hang onto this comment?

I think so, we should only inject this option when launched from Positron. Probably an easy fix if you want to do it here?

I don't really follow how ark would hit ps_browse_url_impl() outside of Positron. Because I assume it works like this:

In Positron, ark takes charge of the "browser" option and that eventually routes through here.

But outside of Positron, ark would presumably have the default implementation of "browser", yeah?

Is the claim that ark would error outside of Positron actually true or true anymore? 🤔

Apparently I am wrong. Why do we set an option like "browser" in ark, but outside of Positron? This feels like it might be out of scope for this PR (a bigger problem). In which case I should just retain the comment and move on.

~/tmp % jupyter console --kernel=ark Jupyter console 6.6.3 R version 4.4.2 (2024-10-31) -- "Pile of Leaves" Copyright (C) 2024 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20 R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details. Natural language support but running in an English locale R is a collaborative project with many contributors. Type 'contributors()' for more information and 'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications. Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or 'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help. Type 'q()' to quit R. In [1]: browseURL("~/tmp") 2025-07-21T21:35:02.025887Z ERROR No help port is available to check if '~/tmp' is a help url. Is the help comm open? at crates/ark/src/interface.rs:2032 2025-07-21T21:35:02.026935Z ERROR Failed to browse url due to: UI comm not connected, can't run `open_with_system`. at crates/ark/src/browser.rs:22 In [2]: getOption("browser") Out[2]: function(url) { .ps.Call("ps_browse_url", as.character(url)) } <environment: 0x11fd5bc70>

We are already tracking this problem here: #588.

So I'm going to merge this once the Positron side is approved.

jennybc · 2025-07-19T02:58:45Z

crates/ark/src/browser.rs

-    // For all other URLs, create a ShowUrl event and send it to the main
-    // thread; Positron will handle it.
-    let params = ShowUrlParams { url };
-    let event = UiFrontendEvent::ShowUrl(params);
-
-    let main = RMain::get();
-    let ui_comm_tx = main
-        .get_ui_comm_tx()
-        .ok_or_else(|| anyhow::anyhow!("UI comm not connected."))?;


This code was basically duplicated in ps_ui_show_url() so now they share logic via the send_show_url_event() helper.

jennybc · 2025-07-19T03:00:10Z

crates/ark/src/browser.rs

+    // This is probably a file path? Send to the front end and ask for system
+    // default opener.
+    log::trace!("Treating as file path and asking system to open");
+    let path = r_normalize_path(url.into())?;


The opener service on the Positron side expects a resolved path, so it's important to normalize on the backend.

lionel- · 2025-07-21T11:21:30Z

crates/ark/src/browser.rs

-    // TODO: What is the right thing to do outside of Positron when
-    // `options(browser =)` is called? Right now we error.


I think so, we should only inject this option when launched from Positron. Probably an easy fix if you want to do it here?

lionel- · 2025-07-21T12:32:36Z

crates/ark/src/ui/events.rs

    Ok(R_NilValue)
 }

+pub fn send_open_with_system_default_event(path: &str) -> anyhow::Result<()> {


Align with event name?

Suggested change

pub fn send_open_with_system_default_event(path: &str) -> anyhow::Result<()> {

pub fn send_open_with_system_event(path: &str) -> anyhow::Result<()> {

I like it. I'm implementing in a local commit, because I need to use "Rename Symbol" to also hit the call sites.

Addresses #5486 Companion PR in ark: posit-dev/ark#877 This PR creates a new event in the UI comm that says "open this thing (file, presumably) with the default application according to the OS". The immediate motivating example is to allow R's `browseURL()` to work as expected in the Positron console. ### Release Notes  #### New Features - `browseURL()` in R now delegates to the operating system's default opener for inputs that are not recognized as a web URL or an HTML file. #### Bug Fixes - N/A ### QA Notes In R, use `browseURL()` on a local filepath. Exercise a couple of files (meaning file types) and a folder. Here are examples taken from the "R Code" column of the table at #5486 (comment): | R Code | Expectation in Positron R Console, with this PR + ark PR | | -- | -- | |`browseURL(tempdir())` | opens folder in OS's notion of file explorer (e.g. Finder on macOS) | | `temp_csv_file <- tempfile()` `write.csv(iris, temp_csv_file)` `browseURL(temp_csv_file)` | opens the csv file in OS's default application (for text files? on macOS, I'm getting TextEdit) | | `temp_csv_file_with_ext <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")` `write.csv(iris, temp_csv_file_with_ext)` `browseURL(temp_csv_file_with_ext)` | opens the csv file in OS's default application for `.csv` (VS Code for me, haha) | | `temp_html_file <- tempfile()` `writeLines("Hi!", temp_html_file)` `browseURL(temp_html_file)` | opens the html file in OS's default application (for text files? on macOS, I'm getting TextEdit) | | `temp_html_file_with_ext <- tempfile(fileext = ".html")` `writeLines("Hi!", temp_html_file_with_ext)` `browseURL(temp_html_file_with_ext)` | opens `.html` file in default external browser | When in doubt, the behaviour we seek is whatever happens in R in a plain terminal or in RStudio Console. We should definitely verify this on linux and Windows (I'm on macOS, so feel pretty confident about that). As for tests, I don't really know how we would do that 🤔 in this case. The whole point is to open a file in *some other* application and exactly what that is will vary by OS / user. Signed-off-by: Jennifer (Jenny) Bryan <jenny.f.bryan@gmail.com>

jennybc added 4 commits July 16, 2025 14:25

WIP poking around

fde9cb8

Rough in over here in ark

79f2a25

Regenerate UI comm; actually implement the event

1041ba0

Normalize on this side

6747682

In particular, I'm thinking of expanding `~`, i.e. the home directory

jennybc mentioned this pull request Jul 19, 2025

Add "open with system default application" event to UI comm posit-dev/positron#8588

Merged

jennybc commented Jul 19, 2025

View reviewed changes

lionel- approved these changes Jul 21, 2025

View reviewed changes

Align function name with event name

d9ec603

This was referenced Jul 21, 2025

Behavior of options(browse =) outside of Positron #588

Open

Help: ShowUrl events should provide some feedback on invalid URLs posit-dev/positron#3520

Closed

jennybc merged commit dad2c39 into main Jul 22, 2025
6 checks passed

jennybc deleted the browseURL-for-files-etc branch July 22, 2025 14:44

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Use new UI event to send a putative path to the system for opening #877

Use new UI event to send a putative path to the system for opening #877

jennybc commented Jul 19, 2025 •

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		// TODO: What is the right thing to do outside of Positron when
		// `options(browser =)` is called? Right now we error.

	pub fn send_open_with_system_default_event(path: &str) -> anyhow::Result<()> {
	pub fn send_open_with_system_event(path: &str) -> anyhow::Result<()> {

Use new UI event to send a putative path to the system for opening #877

Use new UI event to send a putative path to the system for opening #877

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jennybc commented Jul 19, 2025 •

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