Open File on double click using ServerSocket no good, any other approaches?
I've written an application to manage poker tournaments. It is deployed via Java Web Start, and it is a signed application.
Last night I implemented filetype associations so that when the user doubleclicks a file saved by my application it is opened in my application. If the application is already running I open the file in the already running instance. In other words, there are never two instances of the application running simultaneously.
I use a ServerSocket in the main instance to listen for incoming filenames, and Socket to pass the filenames to the main instance when a user doubleclicks a file. This works great except for one thing.
On WinXP the firewall pops up when I fire up the ServerSocket. And this is no good for me since pokerplayers usually have some online pokersoftware installed as well and are quite paranoid about keyloggers and such. I think I'll have a hard time explaining that the firewall message is there so that the user can open files by doubleclicking them. This comes on top of the security warning that pops up when the user starts the software(from signing the application with my homemade certificate).
I'm therefore looking for another approach to handle opening files. First thing I can think of is just to write the path of files to be opened to a shared file and have the main instance poll that file on regular intervals. But I'm guessing that a lot of people have had this problem before me and I really would like to know how you solved it.
