List all drives Addon SDK (Nodejs/jpm) without require Chrome

Question

Is this the only SO question about listing drives ??

I'm on Windows, I'm a newbee in addon developement, I (currently) use Firefox Addon SDK with Node.js/jpm, but not Web Extensions (yet), nor the XPCOM/XUL thing. Seems like some are mixing the whole thing..

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as of May 2016, Web Extensions can't parse File System (otherwise I would be very happy to have access to the documentation allowing that too ^^.) And it appears that the Require chrome is now deprecated along with XUL/XPCOM things. As I guess everyone is pushed forward (looks like) to go Web Extensions (that is out of the scope of the subject), there's no way I would go Require chrome as I would have to drop it anyway next year...

So how do we list drives in Firefox Addon SDK without importing the deprecated libraries ?

My answer below, but would like to have a better option if any. The MDN page about is :

• either talking about deprecated methods
• or just showing you how to manipulate a directory you already know the whereabout.

Answer 1

Here is what I could do with the Addon SDK (or initially jetpack if I'm not mistaken), and yeah, that's a kind of hack because I don't know how to do it in a cleaner way, and I don't want to use Require Chrome.

Minimal version :

// index.js or main.js
// declare the io/file API :
var ioFile = require('sdk/io/file');

// array to make attempts :
let drivesIds = ["c", "d", "e", "f", "g", .... "z" ]; // hack isn't it ? :/ 
for (let i = 0; i < drivesIds.length; i++) {
    let driveName = drivesIds[i] + ":\\";
    if (ioFile.exists(driveName)) {
        console.log(driveName + " is a drive and is ready !");
    }
}

And you're done ! Okay, that was pretty obvious, but I failed to find that code anywhere I searched, or a code that does it better (again, without require('chrome'))

Extended versions can :

• put the whole thing in a function getDrives() that returns array of drives objects like { path: "c:\\", hasChildren: true, etc: "etc" }. (check for child directories by combining ioFile.isFile() with ioFile.list() in a for loop that breaks the moment a subdir is encountered.
• port the code to another addon module, with exports implementations
• even encapsulates io functions and properties as members of a global object in a module (you can monitor filesystem changes like unplugged dir, store filesystem tree in memory, etc.)

All that making your index.js file lighter. Can this be adapted to other OS ? I don't know. The title is misleading while this is the only question about listing drives Addon SDK tagged.

Never ever try to build an entire drive tree, that would bring the computer to a halt, and fail at a point or another because io/file is limited to 250-260 chars in path length on Windows.

Security issues ! That's probably why it's undocumented, why WebExtensions disallows io operations ? But, I use that to inject a nice windows explorer (select a dir to save whatever you want in there, shortcutting save as or download dialogs). That's the only relevant reason why I use Firefox. I would go back to dotNet and reinvent the wheel with again lots of security holes if io is not flexible enough (or missing) in WE, or try Chrome instead (if no deprecated API in the next 10 years). Fact is, the moment you can automate io parsing, there will be security issues, but the moment you disallow that, Addon extensions is not the way to go with filesystem.