Find the path of a resource:// or chrome:// in XUL

Question

In my XUL application I have to make a system call which is more complicated than running a single process, so I wrote a very simple bash file with a couple of commands and I run a process initialized with this bash file.

The problem is how to find the path of the file itself. Normally I use chrome:// or resource:// paths for all I need. But I need the absolute path in order to call this file. Is there a reliable way to get it?

Answer 1

I've used this function

function chromeToPath (aPath) {

   if (!aPath || !(/^chrome:/.test(aPath)))
      return; //not a chrome url
   var rv;

      var ios = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/network/io-service;1'].getService(Components.interfaces["nsIIOService"]);
        var uri = ios.newURI(aPath, "UTF-8", null);
        var cr = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/chrome/chrome-registry;1'].getService(Components.interfaces["nsIChromeRegistry"]);
        rv = cr.convertChromeURL(uri).spec;

        if (/^file:/.test(rv))
          rv = this.urlToPath(rv);
        else
          rv = this.urlToPath("file://"+rv);

      return rv;
}

function urlToPath (aPath) {

    if (!aPath || !/^file:/.test(aPath))
      return ;
    var rv;
   var ph = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/network/protocol;1?name=file"]
        .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIFileProtocolHandler);
    rv = ph.getFileFromURLSpec(aPath).path;
    return rv;
}

From this forum post.