External tool link: open a new tab

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1

Greetings all!

I was hoping a Galaxy admin could help me.
Based on examples like: galaxy/tools/data_source/diced.xml at dev · galaxyproject/galaxy, I have added a tool to our Galaxy instance that runs somewhere else on our local network.

The tool xml points to this url using:

<inputs action="http://some-url.app" check_values="false">
  <display>
    Link to the app
  </display>
</inputs>

Now, I know this functionality is used to do some processing of data, possibly sending a dataset from history to the tool, or receiving back results and posting them in the history. But for me, at this stage, its simply a link to my external app.

What I would like to achieve is, that the link to the app is opened in a new tab and not in the current window. So Galaxy stays open in a tab and the app opens a new one.

I tried with target=“_blank”, but this seems to be ignored.

Does anyone know if this is possible? I was not able to find an example in the Galaxy repo. Did I miss something obvious here?

Thank you for your help in advance!

2

Welcome @JBoom

This is a good question! The tool you reference also links out directly, leaving the Galaxy tab.

The link to your external tool is in the main body of the tool form, yes? You may just need to move this link down into the Help section, where custom text and external link outs are expected and target=“_blank” should be respected by the client web browser.

Example:

Screen Shot 2025-12-03 at 2.00.40 PM
Screen Shot 2025-12-03 at 2.00.40 PM1858×712 123 KB

But maybe this can be even better! What about including your external app as an InteractiveTool? This way it would still show up in the tool panel but also allow users to track current sessions. This would also be the path for preparation steps that would allow user data to transfer out and back in again.

Let us know if either of those help! We could reach out to the other developers for more ideas. :slight_smile:

3

Thank you for your reply @jennaj!

I liked the feature where users would just click the tool name in the tool bar and it would directly send them to the tool. I will try the link in the Help section! The interactive tools sounds even nicer, but that will probably take me some more time :smiley:.

I might put up a feature request in the GitHub repo :blush:.

Thank you again!

1 Like
4

Great, glad that provided some options! :rocket:

And, yes, if you want the tool bar to include the new tab/window to the tool referenced, I think that will need a ticket at the /galaxy repo here. → GitHub · Where software is built. The developers will provide feedback if I missing something. (Though .. they watch our conversations here and probably would have commented by now!).

1 Like