How to detect if some specific file type can be opened (riscoscloverleaf)

Hello,

I try to implement video play in the !ChatCube. I would like to download video from net and then run it with “*Filer_Run ” but if there no video player like FFPlay then I will get error “An application that loads a file of this type has not been found”. So to avoid this error I need to know is file with specific file type can be opened, I mean that ffplay or some other video player is installed and able to handle this type.
If file can’t be opened then I will just open the “Downloads” directory with downloaded file.

Question, how to check is specific file type can be opened?

I’d just check for the existence of the variable Alias$@RunType_XXX where XXX is the hex file type. This will tell you that at least some program is registered as willing to run that file. It might not be the actual program that does run it when you invoke *Filer_Run as it may be claimed by a different running application.

@Stuart Swales

Thank you for this trick!
I would not have thought of that, I was looking for some sort of SWI but not found anything useful..
Thanks again!

I think *Filer_Run is not a good way to play the downloaded video.
You can set the filetype to avi (&fb2) for all downloaded video. If ffplay or mplayer was seen by the filer, Filer_Run should work.
I have try this for YTPlay. Works but any times it gives siteeffects in desktop … I can not really describe but was not a good solution.
Better for me is something like…

SYS “Wimp_StartTask”,"FFplay:!AutoPlay “+ filetoplay$ +” TO playerTask%

or

SYS “Wimp_StartTask”,"<Mplayer$Dir>.!Run “+ filetoplay$ +” 1>NULL: 2>&1" TO playerTask%

from your own app.
filetoplay$ can be a local path or a URL to a videofile. The filetyp is not needed but the file should have a video/playlist extension.