Local Files Viewer

A simple program to view files in your browser including text files, markdown, HTML, PDFs, images, videos, audio, and fonts. You can use it as a self-hosted knowledge base where the knowledge is stored in files.

This program also allows you to preview your content live as you edit the file, and allows you to have your cursor position match up with the page view, which is useful for a live markdown preview.

It is read-only, such that it does not currently handle creating, editing, renaming, or deleting files. Check out filebrowser, which might better suit your needs for file management.

If you are interested in this idea of a self-hosted knowledge base (and one that you can securely access anywhere), I would suggest looking into Trilium. While this program can host on a server that can be access anywhere, I'm not so confident on its security.

Previews

Markdown:

For more previews, visit previews.md

Security Note

This program uses the web browser's provided API for images, videos, audios, fonts, and iframes to display HTML & PDF content. It uses node's fs.readFile to read the file contents.

Do not open up any folders that include files you do not trust.

Installation

This method isn't recommend or maintained, but if you want to install as an npm global package:

npm i -g local-files-viewer

(Recommend) Install yourself:

git clone https://github.com/kitesi/local-files-viewer.git
cd local-files-viewer
npm install
npm run build
npm link

Usage

This program works off of two environment variables: LFV_DEFAULT_FOLDER and LFV_ROOT_FOLDER.

• LFV_DEFAULT_FOLDER: The folder that is being opened to examine
• LFV_ROOT_FOLDER: The root directory that the program is allowed to traverse. For example if LFV_ROOT_FOLDER=/home/user then the user is allowed to traverse through /home/user/, /home/user/code, and /home/user/Downloads but not /home. If this environment variable is unset, it will default to LFV_DEFAULT_FOLDER.

This program provides a script (in ./bin/lfv.js) to run the program and set the LFV_DEFAULT_FOLDER variable temporarily.

If you installed this package globally hopefully lfv is available to you. If you installed it locally you will have to do npm link.

To use the script you can just call lfv [folder]. If no folder is provided, it will default to your env variable of LFV_DEFAULT_FOLDER.

Keybindings

h => go to previous file

l => go to next file

ctrl+p => open file finder

ctrl+o => open directory picker (allows you to change the base directory)

ctrl+y => search through the entire directory for words (with ripgrep)

palette mode:

(file mode) ctrl+j, tab => next item

(file mode) ctrl+k, shift+tab => previous item

(directory mode) tab=> completion

(directory mode) shift+tab => nothing

ctrl+m, enter => select item

ctrl+[, Escape => close palette

Live View & Neovim Integration

This program automatically reloads the content when the current file is changed. If you would like to sync up the cursor position of neovim to the program then you can use the following configuration:

local uv = vim.loop

function OpenLfv()
	local current_dir = vim.fn.getcwd()
	local buffer_file = vim.fn.expand("%:p")
	local buffer_dir = vim.fn.fnamemodify(buffer_file, ":h")
	local target_dir = vim.fn.isdirectory(current_dir) == 1 and current_dir or buffer_dir

	if vim.fn.isdirectory(target_dir) == 1 then
		vim.cmd("tabnew | terminal lfv " .. vim.fn.shellescape(target_dir))

		local relative_path = vim.fn.fnamemodify(buffer_file, ":~:.")
		if relative_path:sub(1, #target_dir) == target_dir then
			relative_path = relative_path:sub(#target_dir + 2)
		end

		-- Launch browser after delay
		vim.fn.jobstart("sleep 2", {
			on_exit = function()
				local url = "http://localhost:4173/preview/" .. relative_path
				vim.fn.jobstart({ "xdg-open", url }, { detach = true })
			end,
		})

		-- Create autocmd to track cursor movements
		local debounce_timer = nil
		local group = vim.api.nvim_create_augroup("LfvLineSync", { clear = true })

		vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd({ "CursorMoved", "CursorMovedI" }, {
			group = group,
			callback = function()
				if debounce_timer then
					debounce_timer:stop()
					debounce_timer:close()
				end

				debounce_timer = vim.loop.new_timer()
				debounce_timer:start(
					150,
					0,
					vim.schedule_wrap(function()
						local line = vim.fn.line(".")
						local payload = string.format('{"file": "%s", "line": %d}', relative_path, line)

						vim.fn.jobstart({
							"curl",
							"-X",
							"POST",
							"-H",
							"Content-Type: application/json",
							"-d",
							payload,
							"http://localhost:4173/api/cursor-watcher",
						}, { detach = true })
					end)
				)
			end,
		})
	else
		print("No valid directory found.")
	end
end
vim.cmd("command! Lfv lua OpenLfv()")