13920 - location bar: /foo/bar should try file:/foo/bar

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Networking, defect, P3)

Description

[Chris McAfee]

Linux, apprunner.
Type in an absolute file path into the URL bar,
it should get prefixed with "file:".  Instead,
a "http:" prefix shows up.

There's some platform-specific stuff that needs to happen here.

Comment 1

[Gagan]

volunteers for this?

Comment 2

[Warren Harris]

I think Jud should get this since it seems related to the keyword/www.*.com
work he's doing. I think that if the string that the user typed into the
location bar fails to build a valid URL, we need to:

- try keywords (if they're enabled)
- if the string doesn't seem to start with a scheme (alphanumerics up to a
colon), try prepending http:, then try file: and perhaps ftp:
- if that still fails, try fixing up the host name (www.*.com, etc.)

Comment 3

[Andreas Otte]

I have a fix for this. It is located in nsWebShell.cpp. Currently
convertFileToURL does nothing when not XP_PC. I changed it for non XP_PC to
prepend the url with file:/// if it starts with a /. Can someone test this on
the mac to see how it behaves there?

The attached diff fixes also another problem in nsWebShell.cpp (see bug 15315).
Feel free to also test this.

Comment 4

[Andreas Otte]

Attachment: fix for this bug, please test it

Comment 5

[Chris McAfee]

We should make this change XP_UNIX and file
a Mac-specific bug so Mac people can look at
this problem.  Other OS's are here too, so ?
might want to be conservative and not solve the
non-Windows problem just yet.

Comment 6

[Andreas Otte]

Agreed, but I think the real distinction here is if drive letters are used or
not. Is there a define for that?

Comment 7

[Andreas Otte]

Attachment: New patch version incorporating mcafee suggestions

Comment 8

[Andreas Otte]

Attachment: After radha's checkin this a clean patch only for this bug. Please review.

Comment 9

[Chris McAfee]

A given file, let's take /etc/passwd, should resolve to
file:///etc/passwd  (file://empty-hostname-for-local-FS/etc/passwd)

Adding shaver.

Comment 10

[Chris McAfee]

Attaching new patch so we get file:///etc/passwd on unix,
Jud what does this do on Win32?  Can you review?

Comment 11

[Chris McAfee]

Attachment: /etc/passwd -> file:///etc/passwd

Comment 12

[Andreas Otte]

With the current version of nsStdURL.cpp it is not save to get always a / as
start of the urlpath (at least on windows with file urls). I guess that is the
reason the file prefix was with three / to ensure this. See bug 15069 for a
patch to fix that problem. After that fix I think it's save to use file:// as
prefix.

Comment 13

[Andreas Otte]

Attachment: added removal of conversion from \ to / and : to |. This is done in nsStdURL.cpp

Comment 14

[Gagan]

I dont think we should special case nsStdURLs parsing. This solution has to lie
outside the standard parsing routines.

Comment 15

[Warren Harris]

*** Bug 17251 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Warren Harris]

This whole process needs to be accommodated in the new webshell design. The
current mechanism only trys slapping on a prefix and detecting if it's a valid
URL (syntactically) before causing the load. What we need is the ability to
detect the load failure, and try a different URL (e.g. file://... or
keyword:...).

Note that this is also part of bug 2875 (keyword urls).

Comment 17

[Warren Harris]

This is really an xp thing.

Also see bug 16897 for related issues.

Comment 18

[leger]

Bulk move of all Necko (to be deleted component) bugs to new Networking

component.

Comment 19

[Andreas Otte]

No need to move to M15, this is fixed now 

Comment 20

[Tom Everingham]

verified:
Linux 2000020708