Link to local artifact file with view.qiime2.org

Is it possible to create a link to q2view page for a local artifact file (not a file on the web) without dragging and dropping? I see I can create a link to a file on the web. What I would like is something similar for a local file. But when I try, for example, a URL like this:

https://view.qiime2.org/visualization/?type=html&src=file:///Users/luke/Desktop/bray_curtis_emperor.qzv

I get the error "TypeError: Failed to fetch".

I see that when I drag and drop a local file, the URL changes to a string not resembling the file name, for example:

https://view.qiime2.org/visualization/?type=html&src=c6e5426e-d290-4a69-bbde-1dc41c56aea3

Is there a way to generate that portion after "src=" without dragging and dropping?

Thanks!

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Hey @Luke_Thompson, sorry for the slow response here.

This is a great idea, but it isn't currently possible. It might be possible to engineer a new solution in q2view that would do this, but I think it might be a bit tricky (since programmatic access to the local filesystem through the browser is understandably a major security concern - you wouldn't want facebook or github to have ad hoc access to your files).

What might be possible is to specify the filepath in the URL, which would trigger a new alert to pop up in the browser - if you click something like "yes, I meant to open that file," it would trigger the file dialog and automatically open the file. The problem is that we can't get away from requiring some manual intervention, since opening the file dialog in a browser must come from a user-originated event. Sorry I don't have a better solution at the moment.

In the nearish-term - we are probably going to stick a local copy of q2view into q2cli, so that you'll get things like provenance viewing etc locally, but, no ETA on when that might land.

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Thanks @thermokarst! A local version of q2view would be sweet!

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