I have the exact problem, and think that we'll eventually see a few solutions for this, but right now no clear choice emerges.
Adobe Flex is a contender, but I haven't gotten far enough into it to know. If you're running in a Windows-only environment, there are some interesting things you can do with Internet Explorer, but they seem to be better done in an intranet, otherwise there are (rightfully) all sorts of security issues to deal with. Another way is to embed your filesystem needs in an object and having your web page interact with that object (via Javascript, like you'd interact with a Flash object). I'm still looking for a simple solution, my ideal world would allow me to compile a PHP script to an object and embed it, but that's not going to happen. Along those lines, I keep hoping that GTK will revive and I can create standalone, cross-platform GUI applications in PHP. But I imagine one of the other solutions (Gears with more file access, Flex, etc.) will happen before that. I would be very happy if Gears offered a "Allow this site to read directory and file names?" as part of the security prompt, or even limit it to certain directories. It'd be insane to give global access to something like Gears (without explicit permission), but I'd love to have some limited filesystem access. Tac 2009/7/12 Daniel Vocke <[email protected]>: > > Hi Gears community, > > I am currently evaluating Gears (more precisely GWT + Gears) for its > value as a real platform for application development. I believe that > this is the right step in the right direction and see great potential. > However, there are shortcomings with regards to the current version. I > know we are far from being version 1.0 so I wonder whether this is > functionality soon to come or whether the community / the developers > think that this will never work for security reasons. Here my > scenario: > > I am writing a web application that is making heavy use of a user's > local files in a certain directory (and subdirectories). As far as I > understood the Gears API, the only way to access local files is to use > the Desktop class which offers me that functionality through a user > dialog. (Would be happy to learn that I am wrong). This does not meet > my needs though as I might want to frequently access diverse files in > a certain folder without bugging the user all the time. I believe that > full local filesystem access is mandatory for a "platform" that tries > to enable desktop-like applications. > > So my question is: Will there be a way to get full access to a folder > of the user's choosing? (Assuming the user granted all the rights and > was informed about the implications). Is there a way to get that > today, or if not, maybe sometime soon? > > Best, > > Daniel Vocke > >
