Re: Simple API proposal for writing file in local file system

On 10/18/2013 11:11 AM, Jeremie Patonnier wrote:
>
> 2013/10/18 Ehsan Akhgari <ehsan.akhgari@gmail.com 
> <mailto:ehsan.akhgari@gmail.com>>
>
>     Have you seen this proposal?
>     <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-script-coord/2013JulSep/0379.html>
>      It's not clear to me if your proposal here is trying to solve
>     problems that the above proposal doesn't already solve...
>
>
> Yes, I saw that proposal but no, I do not suggest to solve the same 
> problem.
>
> I found that proposal for an abstract file system very good when the 
> application have to work in its own world.
> Unfortunately there is a few cases where it is very convenient to 
> allow to actually truly write on the os file system.
>
> Here a few concrete example:
>
>   * When the user want to export his file to an external storage (Hard
>     drive, USB storage, SD Card, etc.) In that case it where web dev
>     use the data URI workaround to "download" the file.
>   * When the user want to use a resource available in its file system
>     and want to update that resource with any change he made to have
>     some other application using it as well (mostly native apps on
>     desktop). For example, editing an image and put it back on the
>     file system to have another native application accessing it (let's
>     say for example Adobe Lightroom). So being able to open a file and
>     perform (silent) saving on the original file allows to build
>     smoother workflow when using a native app and a web app at the
>     same time.
>
>


Chrome has a secured extension for maintaining access to the local file 
system:
http://developer.chrome.com/apps/fileSystem.html

They only allow this for "packaged applications". This, with the 
FileSystem API allows for -most- of what you'd like. While it can be a 
little clumsy to work with, so can IDB; it just takes some wrapping 
code. As discussed, an easier promises based API is being developed by 
Mozilla, and while it's questionable as to whether Google or other 
vendors will follow, wrapping existing callback APIs into promises is 
not a big deal in the JS-side.

Unfortunately, nobody has stepped forward with concrete code for file 
watchers. The File API itself is a little "broken", as File objects were 
supposed to be immutable, but we have undefined behavior when a File is 
changed on the local file system.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012AprJun/0846.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2012JulSep/0431.html

-Charles