How can I create a link to a local file on a locally-run web page

Question

I d like to have an html file that organizes certain files scattered throughout my hard drive  For example  I have two files that I would link to    C  Programs sort mw C  Videos lecture mp4   The problem is that I d like the links to function as a shortcut to the file  I ve tried the following    lt a href  C  Programs sort mw  gt Link 1 lt  a gt   lt a href  C  Videos lecture mp4  gt Link 2 lt  a gt        but the first link does nothing and the second link opens the file in Chrome  not VLC   My questions are    Is there a way to adjust my HTML to treat the links as shortcuts to the files  If there isn t a way to adjust the HTML  are there any other ways to neatly link to files scattered throughout the hard drive    My computer runs Windows 7 and my web browser is Chrome

User · Answer

If you are running IIS on your PC you can add the directory that you are trying to reach as a Virtual Directory. To do this you right-click on your Site in ISS and press "Add Virtual Directory". Name the virtual folder. Point the virtual folder to your folder location on your local PC. You also have to supply credentials that has privileges to access the specific folder eg. HOSTNAME\username and password. After that you can access the file in the virtual folder as any other file on your site.

http://sitename.com/virtual_folder_name/filename.fileextension

By the way, this also works with Chrome that otherwise does not accept the file-protocol file://

Hope this helps someone :)

User · Answer

You need to use the file     protocol  yes  that s three slashes  if you want to link to local files   lt a href  quot file    C  Programs sort mw quot  gt Link 1 lt  a gt   lt a href  quot file    C  Videos lecture mp4 quot  gt Link 2 lt  a gt   These will never open the file in your local applications automatically  That s for security reasons which I ll cover in the last section  If it opens  it will only ever open in the browser  If your browser can display the file  it will  otherwise it will probably ask you if you want to download the file  You cannot cross from http s  to the file protocol Modern versions of many browsers  e g  Firefox and Chrome  will refuse to cross from the http s  protocol to the file protocol to prevent malicious behaviour  This means a webpage hosted on a website somewhere will never be able to link to files on your hard drive  You ll need to open your webpage locally using the file protocol if you want to do this stuff at all  Why does it get stuck without file      The first part of a URL is the protocol  A protocol is a few letters  then a colon and two slashes  HTTP    and FTP    are valid protocols  C   isn t and I m pretty sure it doesn t even properly resemble one  C   also isn t a valid web address  The browser could assume it s meant to be http   c  with a blank port specified  but that s going to fail  Your browser may not assume it s referring to a local file  It has little reason to make that assumption because webpages generally don t try to link to peoples  local files  So if you want to access local files  tell it to use the file protocol  Why three slashes  Because it s part of the File URI scheme  You have the option of specifying a host after the first two slashes  If you skip specifying a host it will just assume you re referring to a file on your own PC  This means file    C  etc is a shortcut for file   localhost C  etc  These files will still open in your browser and that is good Your browser will respond to these files the same way they d respond to the same file anywhere on the internet  These files will not open in your default file handler  e g  MS Word or VLC Media Player   and you will not be able to do anything like ask File Explorer to open the file s location  This is an extremely good thing for your security  Sites in your browser cannot interact with your operating system very well  If a good site could tell your machine to open lecture mp4 in VLC exe  a malicious site could tell it to open virus bat in CMD exe  Or it could just tell your machine to run a few Uninstall exe files or open File Explorer a million times  This may not be convenient for you  but HTML and browser security weren t really designed for what you re doing  If you want to be able to open lecture mp4 in VLC exe consider writing a desktop application instead

User · Answer

Janky at best   lt a href  file      server folders x x filename ext  gt right click  lt  a gt  lt  td gt    and then right click  select  copy location  option  and then paste into url

User · Answer

back to 2017   use URL createObjectURL  file   to create local link to file system that user select   don t forgot to free memory by using URL revokeObjectURL

User · Answer

I ve a way and work like this    lt  a href  FOLDER PATH  target   explorer exe  gt Link Text lt   a gt

[html] How can I create a link to a local file on a locally-run web page?

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