Graphql-engine: CLI option to choose the browser when opening the console

[tibotiber]

Hi,

Is there any way to choose which browser will be used when opening the console with the CLI? A bit like the BROWSER environment variable in create-react-app.

Thanks,
Thibaut

[shahidhk]

@tibotiber The CLI uses the following programs to open the url on a browser:

        OSX: "open"
    Windows: "start"
Linux/Other: "xdg-open"

So, depending on your OS, you can change the corresponding settings to make the url open on a different browser. For example on Linux, you can see what the default web browser is by using xdg-settings get default-web-browser and then you can change it using the following command:

xdg-settings set default-web-browser firefox.desktop

[tibotiber]

Thanks @shahidhk. The idea here is that developers might prefer to use a different browser than their default one for work. For example. I use Firefox for my personal stuff and Firefox developer edition for dev stuff. This allows me to wipe my browser at will for dev without impacting my « other life ». Would be great to support this.

When I run yarn start on my monorepo, the react dev server starts automatically with the dev browser but Hasura opens on my personal browser at the moment.

I don’t mind trying my hand at adding this if you guys are keen and can give me some pointers.

[shahidhk]

That would be great if you can give this a try.

This is where issue the call to open the browser: https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/blob/master/cli/commands/console.go#L163

And we use this Go package to do it: https://github.com/skratchdot/open-golang/

The open-golang package is just executing the right command depending on the OS. If you can find out a way to over-ride the browser used for that particular execution, that would be great!

[shahidhk]

Ah, there seems to be an option to set the program to use:
open.RunWith("https://google.com/", "firefox")
So, we can probably add a new env var HASURA_GRAPHQL_CLI_DEFAULT_BROWSER or something similar to derive this value.

[tibotiber]

Cool!

So to be honest, I didn't realize the codebase was not gonna be Javascript, my bad 😅. I've never done Go before and the syntax looks huuummm.... strange(?)

Nevertheless, would be a cool little challenge for me, but you may have to review a bit more than the average PR haha. Would you point me to a place that reads an environment variable somewhere in the code? I've checked the CLI code a bit but you don't use environment variables here if I'm not mistaken.

I'm travelling right now so probably gonna look into this in a week or two.

[shahidhk]

@tibotiber Environment variables are read using https://github.com/spf13/viper/

You will need to add a new option to the ExecutionContext at https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/blob/master/cli/cli.go#L124-L185 and then assign value from readConfig at https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/blob/master/cli/cli.go#L303-L326

Later use the value by changing the function at https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine/blob/master/cli/commands/console.go#L163 to RunWith

[tibotiber]

Thanks @shahidhk, super useful pointers. I'll try this soon and post back on progress (or lack thereof 😬)

[tibotiber]

Posted an PR attempt at #3406 :)