Open the default browser in Ruby

Question

In Python, you can do this:

import webbrowser webbrowser.open_new("http://example.com/") 

It will open the passed in url in the default browser

Is there a ruby equivalent?

Answer 1

Cross-platform solution:

First, install the Launchy gem:

$ gem install launchy 

Then, you can run this:

require 'launchy'  Launchy.open("http://stackoverflow.com") 

Answer 2

This should work on most platforms:

link = "Insert desired link location here" if RbConfig::CONFIG['host_os'] =~ /mswin|mingw|cygwin/   system "start #{link}" elsif RbConfig::CONFIG['host_os'] =~ /darwin/   system "open #{link}" elsif RbConfig::CONFIG['host_os'] =~ /linux|bsd/   system "xdg-open #{link}" end