Re: File API - Writer suspension

On Jun 1, 2014, at 1:22 PM, Julian Ladbury <julian.ladbury@berrick-computing.co.uk> wrote:

> I fail to understand why work on this API has been suspended.
> 


Just to be clear, by “this API” I think you mean: 
http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/file-system/file-writer.html



> HTML5, JavaScript and CSS together are becoming a natural platform of choice on which to write portable applications. Indeed, I have just started work on just such a project, welcoming the chance it gives to break away from proprietary solutions.
> 
> An essential part of any mature application is the ability to share data with other applications. As an example, JSON provides an ideal way to do this: but to be useful, it has to be possible to save a JSON file on a local system (internet access cannot, and should not, be taken for granted) which can be transmitted by email or other simple means.
> 



I think this is the primary family of use cases around the FileSystem API:

http://w3c.github.io/filesystem-api/Overview.html

which is a successor specification.

A few things:

1. You can already create Blobs without using the BlobBuilder API (which has been deprecated), and you can already save them, but through a user prompt (the “File Save As” dialog).

This Specifiction discourse thread is useful for other workarounds, and a discussion of their shortcomings: http://discourse.specifiction.org/t/saving-files-api/63

Yes, this area of the platform is currently underspecified. Hopefully not for long though :)

2. In the interim, you can probably use IndexedDB to address the immediate use case. 

— A*