Question

EDIT: please read the question and why I want to do it before passing judgement on this, I want to develop locally using a web browser as the interface, I KNOW its a security hole, but if there is a way for the end user to disable this security so it can be used locally I want to know, of course this isn’t possible under normal circumstances as this would create a security issue

Question: I want to make some apps that run locally and just use jquery as the user interface so it would have to have access to the machine’s command line, at the least, so that it can make calls to the system, I don’t want to do it through a web server, in this case, as this overcomplicates it as far as permissions, etc, I want the jquery app to run more like a native app so that it can open files for the user to display to them, etc..

I am wondering if anyone knows of plugins, such as for firefox, that allow this to happen so that I could install this on my machine to make an app like this.. thanks for any info

Answer 1

I don’t know if you can access command line, but you can read local filesystem.

This function do this (in firefox)

function readFile(arq) {
      netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalXPConnect");
      var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
      file.initWithPath(arq);

      // open an input stream from file  
      var istream = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/network/file-input-stream;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIFileInputStream);
      istream.init(file, 0x01, 0444, 0);
      istream.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsILineInputStream);

      var line = {}, lines = [], hasmore;  
      do {  
        hasmore = istream.readLine(line);  
        lines.push(line.value);   
      } while(hasmore);  
      istream.close();  
      return lines;
    }