Develop Reference

How to pass file as an argument to Python process invoked by Java

I am running Java program to call Python process using process builder as shown below,
processBuilder = new ProcessBuilder(
Arrays.asList(
"/usr/bin/python",
"/opt/gui/oc_db5.py",
"-c",
"/opt/gui/test.json")
);
processBuilder.directory(new File("/opt/gui"));
processBuilder.start();
Location of python program is under /opt/gui directory and there is one test.json file also needs to be passed as parameter, with "-c" option, However what i am seeing is that system is appending location of java program with path of JSON file and then pick the .JSON file causing issue for Python code.
What actually python program is getting is /opt/java//opt/gui/test.json. I tried ../../ as well but it didn't work with test.json file.
Is there a way i can specify .JSON file as an argument to python program?

This seemed to work for me. I mean, it fixed the directory problem.
try {
int exitCode = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("python /opt/gui/oc_db5.py -c /opt/gui/test.json", null, new File("/")).waitFor(); // run program and get exit code
} catch(Exception e) { // is there an error?
e.printStackTrace(); // print error
}

bat file does not execute within Java

I have written some code for executing .bat file. which contains some
commands like setting java classpath,etc..And finally there is one command
which runs a Java class file.The HelloWorld class converts some xml file and generating a new xml file in some folder. When I double click .bat file, it executes fine,
but when I try to run I am not getting any output as I was getting through
double click the .bat file. How to make a batch execute and probably it would be nice
if I could see the results through Java console.
Following is MyJava code to execute the .bat file
public void run2() {
try {
String []commands = {"cmd.exe","/C","C:/MyWork/Java/classes/run.bat"} ;
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commands);
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
p.getInputStream()));
String line = null;
while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
And below the some commands which has been set to .bat file
set CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;C:/MyWork/Java
set CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;C:/MyWork/Java/classes
java -cp test.jar;test2.jar test.HelloWorld
Tried with "/C" commad as well. It does not execute. Actually it does not give effect of double click the .bat file. Is there any other way that I can try with?
I can see the contents inside the .bat file through Eclipse console. But it does not give the desired output. Desired output means when I double click .bat file, it executes well. But through java call, I can see the contents only .

When using cmd.exe use /C-Parameter to pass command:
String []commands = {"cmd.exe","/C","C:/MyWork/Java/classes/run.bat"} ;

according to this, the Windows CMD needs the /c argument, to execute commands like this. try this:
String []commands = {"cmd.exe","/c","C:/MyWork/Java/classes/run.bat"} ;

Windows uses \ backslash for Windows and MS-DOS path delimiter. Forward slash / is accepted by Java in the java.io package and translated to be a path delimiter, but will not be directly acceptable to Windows or accepted by the cmd.exe shell.
You may also need to specify either the working directory for the batch file to be executed in, or possibly a full path to the cmd.exe command interpreter.
See: Runtime.exec (String[] cmdarray, String[] envp, File dir)
String[] commands = {"C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe", "/c",
"C:\\MyWork\\Java\\classes\\run.bat"};
File workDir = new File( "C:/MyWork");
Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( commands, null, workDir);
To verify if the batch file is run at all, add a pause command to the batch file. That will keep the window open so you can verify if the batch file is launched at all, and debug this stage-by-stage.

You do not read the error output of your batch file, therefore, you'll never see any error messages printed from there or from CMD.EXE itself. In addition, the sub-program may stall and just wait for you to read the error stream.
Please see related discussions here: How to make a java program to print both out.println() and err.println() statements?

How to correctly run a .bat file from java under a windows service?

From my java project I want to run an external .bat file in another thread. For this purpose I use the following method:
private void posAppRunner(final String path[], final Class targetClass) {
new Thread(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
try {
String line;
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(path);
BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
}
input.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
LogFactory.getLog(targetClass).warn("Error when starting a PosApplication: " + e.getMessage());
}
}
}).start();
I run the following .bat file:
call chdir %~dp0
start java <_some_arguments>
So when I do it locally from IntelliJ IDEA it works correct - a cmd process appears, after that a java process appears and after that the cmd process disappears.
But when I run my java project with this method through ANT under TeamCity windows service, only cmd process appears and nothing happens after. Java process that must be started from the bat file doesn't appear. It looks like I don't read the process output but I do!
Could you expain me, how to overcome this situation?

I believe that the problem is in current working directory. I am not so familiar with bat files and do not remember by heart what does %~dp0 mean. Anyway as the first attempt try to modify your batch file to contain the hard coded path. I believe that this will work.
In this case decide what is better for you: discover the path in java code and then pass it to batch file, generate batch file on the fly, so that it contains all parameters hard coded or debug the script. for example you can remove the start java <_some_arguments> and put
echo %~dp0 > c:\temp\batlog.log
this will print the parameter to log file. Now run it as service and see what does the log file contain. Probably you will see the problem immediately.

How to use "cd" command using Java runtime?

I've created a standalone java application in which I'm trying to change the directory using the "cd" command in Ubuntu 10.04 terminal. I've used the following code.
String[] command = new String[]{"cd",path};
Process child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command, null);
But the above code gives the following error
Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "cd": java.io.IOException: error=2, No such file or directory
Can anyone please tell me how to implement it?

There is no executable called cd, because it can't be implemented in a separate process.
The problem is that each process has its own current working directory and implementing cd as a separate process would only ever change that processes current working directory.
In a Java program you can't change your current working directory and you shouldn't need to. Simply use absolute file paths.
The one case where the current working directory matters is executing an external process (using ProcessBuilder or Runtime.exec()). In those cases you can specify the working directory to use for the newly started process explicitly (ProcessBuilder.directory() and the three-argument Runtime.exec() respectively).
Note: the current working directory can be read from the system property user.dir. You might feel tempted to set that system property. Note that doing so will lead to very bad inconsistencies, because it's not meant to be writable.

See the link below (this explains how to do it):
http://alvinalexander.com/java/edu/pj/pj010016
i.e. :
String[] cmd = { "/bin/sh", "-c", "cd /var; ls -l" };
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);

Have you explored this exec command for a java Runtime, Create a file object with the path you want to "cd" to and then input it as a third parameter for the exec method.
public Process exec(String command,
String[] envp,
File dir)
throws IOException
Executes the specified string command in a separate process with the specified environment and working directory.
This is a convenience method. An invocation of the form exec(command, envp, dir) behaves in exactly the same way as the invocation exec(cmdarray, envp, dir), where cmdarray is an array of all the tokens in command.
More precisely, the command string is broken into tokens using a StringTokenizer created by the call new StringTokenizer(command) with no further modification of the character categories. The tokens produced by the tokenizer are then placed in the new string array cmdarray, in the same order.
Parameters:
command - a specified system command.
envp - array of strings, each element of which has environment variable settings in the format name=value, or null if the subprocess should inherit the environment of the current process.
dir - the working directory of the subprocess, or null if the subprocess should inherit the working directory of the current process.
Returns:
A new Process object for managing the subprocess
Throws:
SecurityException - If a security manager exists and its checkExec method doesn't allow creation of the subprocess
IOException - If an I/O error occurs
NullPointerException - If command is null, or one of the elements of envp is null
IllegalArgumentException - If command is empty

This command works just fine
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(sh -c 'cd /path/to/dir && ProgToExecute)

Using one of the process builder's method we could pass the directory where we expect the cmd to be executed. Please see the below example. Also , you can mention the timeout for the process, using wait for method.
ProcessBuilder builder = new ProcessBuilder("cmd.exe", "/c", cmd).directory(new File(path));
Process p = builder.start();
p.waitFor(timeoutSec, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
In the above code, you can pass the file object of the path[where we expect the cmd to be executed] to the directory method of ProcessBuilder

My preferred solution for this is to pass in the directory that the Runtime process will run in. I would create a little method like follows: -
public static String cmd(File dir, String command) {
System.out.println("> " + command); // better to use e.g. Slf4j
System.out.println();
try {
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command, null, dir);
String result = IOUtils.toString(p.getInputStream(), Charset.defaultCharset());
String error = IOUtils.toString(p.getErrorStream(), Charset.defaultCharset());
if (error != null && !error.isEmpty()) { // throw exception if error stream
throw new RuntimeException(error);
}
System.out.println(result); // better to use e.g. Slf4j
return result; // return result for optional additional processing
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
Note that this uses the Apache Commons IO library i.e. add to pom.xml
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-io</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
<version>2.10.0</version>
</dependency>
To use the cmd method e.g.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
File dir = new File("/Users/bob/code/test-repo");
cmd(dir, "git status");
cmd(dir, "git pull");
}
This will output something like this: -
> git status
On branch main
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.
nothing to commit, working tree clean
> git pull
Already up to date.

Try Use:
Runtime.getRuntime.exec("cmd /c cd path");
This worked
Runtime r = Runtime.getRuntime();
r.exec("cmd /c pdftk C:\\tmp\\trashhtml_to_pdf\\b.pdf C:\\tmp\\trashhtml_to_pdf\\a.pdf cat output C:\\tmp\\trashhtml_to_pdf\\d.pdf");
The below did not work
While using array command did NOT WORK
String[] cmd = {"cmd /c pdftk C:\\tmp\\trashhtml_to_pdf\\b.pdf C:\\tmp\\trashhtml_to_pdf\\a.pdf cat output C:\\tmp\\trashhtml_to_pdf\\d.pdf"}; r.exec(cmd);
FYI am using utility to check OS if its windows above will work for other than windows remove cmd and /c

I had solved this by having the Java application execute a sh script which was in the same directory and then in the sh script had done the "cd".
It was required that I do a "cd" to a specific directory so the target application could work properly.

How to open the notepad file in java?

I want to open Notepad in my Java program. Suppose that I have one button if I click this button the notepad will appear.
I already have a file name and a directory.
How can I implement this case?

Try
if (Desktop.isDesktopSupported()) {
Desktop.getDesktop().edit(file);
} else {
// I don't know, up to you to handle this
}
Make sure the file exists. Thanks to Andreas_D who pointed this out.

(assuming you want notepad to open "myfile.txt" :)
ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("Notepad.exe", "myfile.txt");
pb.start();

Assuming you wish to launch the windows program notepad.exe, you are looking for the exec function. You probably want to call something like:
Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process process = runtime.exec("C:\\path\\to\\notepad.exe C:\\path\\to\\file.txt");
For example, on my machine notepad is located at C:\Windows\notepad.exe:
Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process process = runtime.exec("C:\\Windows\\notepad.exe C:\\test.txt");
This will open notepad with the file test.txt open for editing.
Note you can also specify a third parameter to exec which is the working directory to execute from - therefore, you could launch a text file that is stored relative to the working directory of your program.

Using SWT, you can launch any
If you want to emulate double-clicking on a text in windows, it's not possible only with a plain JRE. You can use a native library like SWT and use the following code to open a file:
org.eclipse.swt.program.Program.launch("c:\path\to\file.txt")
If you don't want to use a third-party lib, you should know and you know where notepad.exe is (or it's visible in PATH):
runtime.exec("notepad.exe c:\path\to\file.txt");
Apache common-exec is a good library for handling external process execution.
UPDATE: A more complete answer to your question can be found here

In IDE (Eclipse) it compains about "C:\path\to\notepad.exe C:\path\to\file.txt" .
So i have used the following which works for me keeping me and my IDE happy :o)
Hopefully this will help others out there.
String fpath;
fPath =System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir")+"filename1" +getDateTime()+".txt";
//SA - Below launches the generated file, via explorer then delete the file "fPath"
try {
Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process process = runtime.exec("explorer " + fPath);
Thread.sleep(500); //lets give the OS some time to open the file before deleting
boolean success = (new File(fPath)).delete();
if (!success) {
System.out.println("failed to delete file :"+fPath);
// Deletion failed
}
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}

String fileName = "C:\\Users\\Riyasam\\Documents\\NetBeansProjects\\Student Project\\src\\studentproject\\resources\\RealWorld.chm";
String[] commands = {"cmd", "/c", fileName};
try {
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commands);
//Runtime.getRuntime().exec("C:\\Users\\Riyasam\\Documents\\NetBeansProjects\\SwingTest\\src\\Test\\RealWorld.chm");
} catch (Exception ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}

You could do this the best if you start notepad in command line with command: start notepad
String[] startNotePadWithoutAdminPermissions = new String[] {"CMD.EXE", "/C", "start" "notepad" };
Save array of string commands and give it like parametr in exec
Process runtimeProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(startNotepadAdmin2);
runtimeProcess.waitFor();