Open a Folder

Open a Folder

Interacting with the file system is essential in most home and business automation scenarios. Using Robomotion, you can automatically open specific folders in File Explorer and directly interact with their content.

What Open a Folder can do

• Build Documents Path (Core.Programming.Function) — sets msg.documents_folder_path to <$Home$>\Documents.
• Input Dialog titled Open a folder, message Select the folder to open..., default msg.documents_folder_path → msg.selected_folder.
• Branch On Cancel (Core.Programming.Function, outputs: 2) — routes to Core.Flow.Stop when msg.selected_folder is empty/whitespace.
• Build Args (Core.Programming.Function) — sets msg.explorer_args = [msg.selected_folder].
• Launch Explorer (Core.Process.StartProcess, optBackground: true, continueOnError: true) — inFilePath: explorer.exe, inArguments: msg.explorer_args → msg.app_process_id, then Core.Flow.Stop.

Behind the scenes

• explorer.exe is launched with the folder path as its sole argument, so Windows opens a new File Explorer window rooted at that folder.
• continueOnError: true keeps the flow from aborting if the path is invalid or explorer is unavailable; the flow simply falls through to Core.Flow.Stop.
• To port to Linux/macOS, swap explorer.exe for xdg-open / open and drop msg.app_process_id — those shells typically exit immediately after dispatching to the desktop environment.