Using Neurosift webapp with local NWB file passed by URL?

[rly]

NWB GUIDE makes Neurosift view a local NWB file by embedding an iframe that points to https://neurosift.app/?p=/nwb&url=http://127.0.0.1:4242/files/Users/rly/Documents/NWB_Data/dandisets/000296/sub-10002342988018666858/sub-10002342988018666858_ses-20170911T135306_ophys.nwb

And you can download Neurosift and run neurosift view-nwb [file path]

But I was wondering - can the Neurosift webapp display an NWB file that exists on the local filesystem? e.g., with a URL https://neurosift.app/nwb?url=file:///Users/rly/Documents/NWB_Data/dandisets/000296/sub-10002342988018666858/sub-10002342988018666858_ses-20170911T135306_ophys.nwb or would that not work because the browser does not have permission to access the filesystem?

[magland]

This is not currently possible in NS. In principle we could do something like this using the File System API, but I don't think it would be as simple as embedding the file path in the URL. I'm not that familiar with how it works, but I think user may need to click to select the file (or a folder). Supporting this would be non-trivial, but if it seems like an important use case, we can consider it.

The alternative is to make NS electron desktop app that has access to the local file system.

[rly]

OK, thanks for the quick response!

I am working with a couple grad students who are basically running NWB GUIDE (an electron app) to use Neurosift on local NWB files (later they'll also use NWB GUIDE for DANDI upload). This works, but NWB GUIDE is a hefty application, and I think it would be convenient in general for users to be able to navigate to neurosift.app and use a file selector to select a local file to explore. This is not a big need since NWB GUIDE and neurosift view-nwb [filepath] already work for local files though. Just want to mark that as a nice-to-have.

[magland]

Okay, I'll keep it open for now.

[magland]

@rly would it help to be able to browse a directory of NWB files that are on the local machine? Something like

neurosift view-folder /path/to/folder

[rly]

via CLI? I don't have a use case for that right now. It might be useful for someone who wants to scan through a bunch of NWB files visually to inspect the data, but it would probably be more efficient to do so programmatically.