XYplorer Beta Club

Hi,

I sometimes want to access URI's such as "file://<hostname>/<share_name>" to access intranet resources in my company. Our internal webpages link to internal files using "file://". These URIs open fine in Windows 10 File Explorer. But XYplorer doesn't seem to support them. Xyplorer, however, does support "\\<hostname>\<share_name>".

Is there some way to enable "file://" access functionality that I am not aware of? If this functionality does not exist, then I would like to put in a feature request.

I pasted a URI such as "file://myhostname/myshare" in the address bar and hit enter. I got an error dialog box with the message "Not Found: Location or item". The dialog box further had the message "Could not find: file:\hostname\myshare".

If I paste "\\myhostname\myshare" in the address bar, and then hit enter, XYplorer navigates to the shared folder successfully.

Well as shown in the example in the help file, it needs to be like this:

file:///C:\Program Files\XYplorer\LicenseXY.txt

So it should work if you use the correct number of forward slashes, (by work I mean open the associated application for the URI)

When I tried with three slashes to open the local file as you suggested, XYplorer started the application registered to open that file type (notepad++ in my case to open LicenseXY.txt).

When I tried with three slashes to open a local directory such as the XYplorer installation directory, XYplorer opened Windows File Explorer, which then showed me that directory.

However, my original question was to open a shared folder on the intranet. If I use three slashes for that (e.g. "file:///myhostname/myshare"), nothing happens after I hit enter.

Based on what I read about file URI scheme, two slashes have to be used if a host name is followed by it.

For a UNC path it would be like this:

file://///myhostname/myshare

"file://///myhostname/myshare" worked in the sense that XYplorer did not throw an error, and started Windows File Explorer to open the URI. I also noted that using 4 slashes instead of 5 cause the same behavior.

Technically, one could say that XYplorer supports file URI (albeit in a modified form, i.e. 4 or 5 slashes instead of 2 slashes) by opening the registered handler. This was unexpected/unanticipated for me. I wanted XYplorer to handle it. But I guess that's how it will be since XYplorer is not a "handler" for file URI.

What is the reason for requiring 4 or 5 slashes? Why don't 2 slashes suffice? When I tried a URI such as "http://microsoft.com", XYplorer correctly opened the browser, passing it the URI. Why doesn't it do that for "file://"?

I will make it work in the next beta.

But why are you using this scheme? Never came across it in real life...

Thank you.

In my company, various people create intranet wiki pages with references to files and directories on internal shares. Most people use "\\myhostname\sharename\path\to\directoryorfile". But some of them use "file://myhostname/sharename/path/to/directoryorfile". Since "file://" is a valid way (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8089) to specify it, and it works well natively with Windows 10, I can't force them to change it to "\\...".

I see. Well, now that I fixed it the company can go ahead and buy a fat site license.

Haha... very funny.... For now, I am the only one with license. I don't think most people are even aware of XYplorer. It is a great tool. For me, the Catalog and File search are killer features. Those are the ones that I use the most. I am going to make my co-workers aware of it.

You are a shining example.

Just checked out version 19.80. file:// works very well. I originally expected XY to delegate the request to File Explorer. But instead, it handled it by itself. This is very convenient. Thanks.