How to specify a local file within html using the file scheme

Question

I m loading a html file hosted on the OS X built in Apache server  within that file I am linking to another html file in the same directory as follows    lt a href  2ndFile html  gt  lt button type  submit  gt Local file lt  button gt    This works  However  for reasons too lengthy to go into  I am experimenting using the file  scheme instead  however I cannot get anything to work  Here is how I am re-writing the above line using file    lt a href  file   192 168 1 57  User 2ndFile html  gt  lt button type  submit  gt Local file lt  button gt     192 168 1 57 is my current IP address   Changing it to the following does also not work    lt a href  file   Name-Of-MacBookPro  User 2ndFile html  gt  lt button type  submit  gt Local file lt  button gt    But the file cannot be found  how should it be specified using the file  scheme

User · Answer

For apache look up SymLink or you can solve via the OS with Symbolic Links or on linux set up a library link/etc

My answer is one method specifically to windows 10.

So my method involves mapping a network drive to U:/ (e.g. I use G:/ for Google Drive)

open cmd and type hostname (example result: LAPTOP-G666P000, you could use your ip instead, but using a static hostname for identifying yourself makes more sense if your network stops)

Press Windows_key + E > right click 'This PC' > press N (It's Map Network drive, NOT add a network location)

If you are right clicking the shortcut on the desktop you need to press N then enter

Fill out U: or G: or Z: or whatever you want Example Address: \\LAPTOP-G666P000\c$\Users\username\

Then you can use <a href="file:///u:/2ndFile.html"><button type="submit">Local file</button> like in your question

related: You can also use this method for FTPs, and setup multiple drives for different relative paths on that same network.

related2: I have used http://localhost/c$ etc before on some WAMP/apache servers too before, you can use .htaccess for control/security but I recommend to not do so on a live/production machine -- or any other symlink documentroot example you can google

User · Answer

the  file     url protocol can only be used to locate files in the file system of the local machine   since this html code is interpreted by a browser  the  local machine  is the machine that is running the browser   if you are getting file not found errors  i suspect it is because the file is not found  however  it could also be a security limitation of the browser  some browsers will not let you reference a filesystem file from a non-filesystem html page  you could try using the file path from the command line on the machine running the browser to confirm that this is a browser limitation and not a legitimate missing file

User · Answer

The file  URL scheme refers to a file on the client machine  There is no hostname in the file  scheme  you just provide the path of the file  So  the file on your local machine would be file     User 2ndFile html  Notice the three slashes  the hostname part of the URL is empty  so the slash at the beginning of the path immediately follows the double slash at the beginning of the URL  You will also need to expand the user s path    does no expand in a file  URL  So you would need file    home User 2ndFile html  on most Unixes   file    Users User 2ndFile html  on Mac OS X   or file    C  Users User 2ndFile html  on Windows    Many browsers  for security reasons  do not allow linking from a file that is loaded from a server to a local file  So  you may not be able to do this from a page loaded via HTTP  you may only be able to link to file  URLs from other local pages

User · Answer

I had similar issue before and in my case the file was in another machine so i have mapped network drive z  to the folder location where my file is then i created a context in tomcat    so in my web project i could access the HTML file via context

User · Answer

The  file  protocol is not a network protocol  Therefore file   192 168 1 57  User 2ndFile html simply does not make much sense    Question is how you load the first file  Is that really done using a web server  Does not really sound like  If it is  then why not use the same protocol  most likely http  You cannot expect to simply switch the protocol and use two different protocols the same way     I suspect the first file is really loaded using the apache server at all  but simply by opening the file  href  2ndFile html  simply works because it uses a  relative url   This makes the browser use the same protocol and path as where he got the first  current  file from

[html] How to specify a local file within html using the file: scheme?

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