Using open-url-in-container with browserouter to open urls in specific firefox containers

[Jerrk]

I was looking for something that would let me to open specific websites in specific firefox containers depending on the application opened from.
I unfortunately missed out on that last part but it's still working on the first 2 parts

that is, to open a firefox container depending on the URL sent to browserouter

heres a little guide if you want to reproduce my setup.

1. install browserouter
2. install the https://github.com/honsiorovskyi/open-url-in-container extension for firefox
3. install the "Firefox Multi-Account Containers" extension for firefox
4. create a container (Work)
5. add a website under "urls" in the browserouter config.json (https://www.office.com/)
6. now go to filters.json and add a filter like so:
   {
   "name": "Route https://www.office.com/ to Work container",
   "find": "^https?://(www\.)?office\.com/?(.*)$",
   "replace": "ext+container:name=Work&url=https://office.com/$2",
   "priority": 3
   }
7. Save the config.json and filters.json

Now whenever you open a office.com link from slack, discord, zoom, etc it will automatically open in your Work container!

I like this because i have different firefox containers for different things even sometimes for the same websites, thats why the "always open this site in..." option doesn't completely solve my issues.

The only thing thats missing now is for browserouter to take into account from what application the URL is coming from, though that might be a big change 😆 .

[nref]

Hi @Jerrk, thanks for sharing this use case and solution! I'm sure that will be useful for others. May I add information like this to the README?

As for this statement:

The only thing thats missing now is for browserouter to take into account from what application the URL is coming from

This feature is already supported! See Source Apps in the README.

[Jerrk]

just read that you specified un-qouted 🤦 ill set firefox on the PATH and try again.

still looks to be an issue with the splitting

  "browsers": {
    "ff-jerrk": "firefox.exe ext+container:name=Jerrk&url={url}",

BrowseRouter: Attempting to launch "https://x.com/" for "Discord -> Discord"
BrowseRouter: Filtered URL: https://x.com/ -> ext+container:name=Jerrk&url=https://x.com/
BrowseRouter: Found URL preference "*" => "ff" ("firefox.exe")
BrowseRouter: Launching firefox.exe with args " "ext+container:name=Jerrk&url=https://x.com/""

looks to be some extra quotes in the args?

in the readme it says

If there are no arguments, then the paths do not need to be quoted. For example, chrome.exe will work.

is this an old instruction for the .ini file?
if i just have

  "browsers": {
    "ff": firefox.exe
   },

in the browsers section browserouter doesnt seem to run at all, not even getting any output in the log.

[nref]

Hi, and thanks for the productive struggle.

Turn out no changes to BrowseRouter are needed to support this. Also no filter is needed. The path to FF must be quoted. I updated the README - thanks for pointing that out. Let me know how it goes!

Example config.json:

{
 ...
  "urls": {
    "*office.com*" : "ff-work"
  },
  "browsers": {
    "ff-work": "\"%ProgramFiles%\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe\" ext+container:name=Work&url={url}"
  },
  "sources": {
    "*Microsoft Teams*": "ff-work"
  }
}

[nref]

You will need to revert to 0.17 - I deleted 0.18.0

[Jerrk]

👌 thats perfect

i somehow had 2 "sources" blocks which probably doesnt help my troubleshooting either.

anyways i went back to 0.17.1 and followed your syntax and now it works without issue.

i did notice if you have spaces in your container names you need to encode the space as %20 and it works.

you can also add multiple ext+container... to one browser so that firefox will open the same URL in multiple container tabs, though it looks to be forced to a new window in that instance.

[nref]

nice! Glad it worked.

I'll see if there's a way to handle the spaces.

Good collaboration!