I'm using jQuery Mobile framework. I'm having a server which hosts a website. The user can connect to website through mobile browser and download files (.doc, .xls, .pdf etc.) from that website. I need to open the file which is saved in the user's mobile programmatically using JavaScript. I tried to open using location.href="file://sdcard/download/test.doc".
But it didn't work. It showed permission denied. Is there any way to this? Please help. Thanks in advance.
For security reasons, browsers will block all access to your local file system. You would have to use other extensions to access those files--or download them to a local variable instead of the file system.
If regular old JavaScript could access your filesystem bad people would be able to do really bad things with greater ease and efficiency. There are a couple of possibilities if you are not using a browser:
http://www.c-point.com/JavaScript/articles/file_access_with_JavaScript.htm
http://www.webreference.com/js/column71/
Those articles are fairly platform specific, and do not leverage the best practices for security though. Caveat Emptor
You can't access the filesystem from pure web-based JavaScript alone, especially not in a cross-platform or cross-browser manner. But you can access the filesystem from ActiveX Controls on Internet Explorer, from Firefox extensions, and from Java applets, all of which you might be able to interact with using JavaScript. Of course you'll have to get the user to install the ActiveX, extension, or applet on the browser first.
There is no way to do this in Javascript. Access to local files is categorically denied for security reasons.
You can link to the file using a <a> element but even that is disabled in most browsers.
Related
We are currently looking at porting a enterprise silverlight application over to html5. The major roadblock that we have hit is the ability to open files from the user's local disk. Currently they have a document library which just links to files on their computer that they can open from within the app and view or print out. All that I read is that you can only access the local sandbox of the web app with the html5 file api's. We want to load these files from code.
Does anyone know of any workarounds to this?
Thanks
There is no way for html5 to access local file without user selection. But FSO: FileSystemObject works for IE and MAYBE could be regarded as a work around. But still there are some requirements to meet.
It is possible to use chrome's filesystem API to access files on a users local filesytem. So you'd have to be willing to make this a chrome only application.
Using java you can create a "Signed" applet which has access to the local filesystem. (if the applet is signed you can request filesystm permissions)
then there is a tutorial for accessing methods of your java code directly from javascript here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/invokingAppletMethodsFromJavaScript.html
you should be able to perform something similar from silverlight.
There is no workaround in pure HTML5/Javascript. You need the use of plugins, such as Java or Silverlight (maybe you shouldn't port it after all). As for workarounds, HTML5 gives you an easy way drag and drop multiple files that you could transfer on the server and then display back to your users. Another workaround would be to install a custom agent (a software with only a tray icon) that would send the information about the current user "document library" to server and then again, you could display it back to the user.
Note: I've heard somewhere that browsers will eventually stop supporting plugins. http://www.howtogeek.com/179213/why-browser-plug-ins-are-going-away-and-whats-replacing-them/
Ya, I agree with Markain. However, if you were to limit your audience solely to chrome users, I daresay, you would most likely use some of your users. If Huazhihao is right, then your number of leaving customers should decrease but users who regularly use firefox won't be happy. Overall, I think that this will not work. Otherwise, there would be too many websites that trashed your hard driver (or at least wherever you have the rights to edit/delete files). I think it would be best if your product was setup to synchronize the file whenever an internet connection was detected and a change was made to the file. That way the user would not need to visit the website whenever the file was uploaded. If this is some kind of an error file, then it would be most beneficial if you were to make a link in the application that when clicked, would upload the file to the website and the website were to do whatever was necessary. If this is a purely online thing, then I don't see what business you would have looking through other peoples' files =-). Hope I helped!
Operating system : Windows 8.
Input-from : A text field from a html page .
Input-type: text.
Output : the file that was searched.
What I want : I want the user to enter some keywords and have JavaScript search the user's local files...
Is there any way? or A javascript Library?....
And how I can query the file system about the files using Javascript..in Windows..
EDIT::
Thanks everyone for the reply...
The way I get it is ,either I have to develop my own browser based in Java that has sufficient permissions.. or
I would have to implement a file crawler that indexes everything that sends that file to the a server , so that javascript can then access it through xmlhttp requests to the server ....
This was just a curiosity and I don't want to expose anyone's personal files on the Internet.
A fun project.. That all tinkered in my mind.
This is not possible from a web page because of the browser's security restrictions. You could access the local file system with Node.js or an Electron app, but I don't know if that would suit your use case
No. That's simply not possible and even if it is, it should not be used, as it would make one's local file system open to various threats because you are directly exposing your machine on the internet. That's sufficient enough reason for a webapp not to access one's local file system in any manner whatsoever.
P.S: If you really want it, There are a few third party libraries which use Sandboxed file systems. You can try that if you want.
I havent tried it personally, but found the below link via quick googling so i am not sure if its officially supported up until now.
https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/filesystem/
Use <input type="file">, which implements ability for user to select file from local filesystem.
I have web application
and i have situation i need to download file (on button click) to certain path in the client
without the browser download dialog box
using chrome (in IE im using activex).
what is the simplest way to do it?
The file is small text file (xml).
I know i have to use external application (flash...)
but i didn't find any info about how to do it or if there is other way
(i prefer to avoid using flash because my knowledge in flash is very limited)
To my knowledge, the only things that you can download from a browser without the user's interaction (and without using plugins, add-ons, activex, applets, ...) are cookies and HTML5 local storage, otherwise that will be a very serious security problem if a website can download any content to the user's machine without his permission and to a certain path .
Even Flash, can not do that, you should always get the user's permission to download something except SharedObjects which are the Flash Player cookies (can be disabled as the browser's cookies).
For AIR, you can not use an AIR app in the browser.
Hope that can help.
I currently have a web app that uses ActiveX / JScript to read files and to read the registry for a web page. Originally when designing the page, it was supposed to be on a site that only supported IE...then things changed and it is no longer that way. My question:
HTML5 is able to read files. Is there any way to read registry entries outside of ActiveX and internet explorer using javascript/html? I'm trying to avoid having to port the entire applet over to use Java, but that may be my best method.
The page makes no modifications, it only reads text files and registry entries.
It is not possible without a third party plugin.
how can you retrieve the data from a document with javascript that isn't the page you are on if you have the url of the new document.
what i am trying to do is create a page that has a text field for providing a local file name and a button that retrieves the words from the document provided.
thanks.
HTML5 has a File API that lets you read local files. It's supported in at least Firefox (3.6 and later, I think) and Chrome. I don't know if any other browsers support it yet or not. If you need to support other browsers, you'll have to fall back to something like Flash, but I don't have any experience with that.
Unfortunately, by default Chrome doesn't allow local files to access other local files (each file is considered to be from its own domain). You can explicitly allow it by adding the --allow-file-access-from-files flag when you launch Chrome.
Here's a good introduction to the File API with several examples: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/dndfiles/.
Browser security does not allow direct access to the local filesystem. If it could, web pages would be able to steal any file of your machine.
HTML5 local storage does allow local access, but on a different principle.