[fxruby-users] Detecting existing running instance of an application

Martin Portman
Wed, 24 May 2006 08:40:26 -0000

Hi all,

Firstly, I''m a bit of an FXRuby-Newby, so apologies if this is simple
stuff!

Here''s my scenario:

  I have an FXRuby app running.
  When the user starts up the app again, I would like to be able to
   detect that the app is already running, and instead of starting up
   a whole second copy of the app, I would like to send a message to
   the existing app.

This would come in handy when tying a file extention to the
application''s
''executable'' under Windows.  So a double click will load the
file into
the existing app, rather than create a second copy.

I can see a few kludgey ways to achieve the detection of the existing app (a
flag in
the fox registry, a temp file etc) but actually getting a handle of the
existing app is a bit beyond me.  What technique will enable me to do this?

Thanks in advance for any pointers anyone can give me.

Martin.