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I am trying to open a .xls file found under a linux server using a web page, using: 

<a href="/tmp/hello.xls">click here</a>

I got a result "resource not found"; however I am sure than it is found under the /tmp directory. Any suggestions please?

Shawn Chin
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roy
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2 Answers2

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That's because when you use href="/tmp/hello.xls", the browser will interpret that as an absolute path relative to the current domain, i.e. http://your_website_domain/tmp/hello.xls, which may not be what you want

If you're targetting /tmp/hello.xls on the client machine

To target a local file, you'll need to specify href="file:///tmp/hello.xls". Unfortunately, that may not work on some browsers which security settings in place which stops the loading of local files from external content.

For more details and a possible workaround, check out this question: How do I make a file:// hyperlink that works in both IE and Firefox?

If you're targetting /tmp/hello.xls on the web server

You cannot directly access a file on the server that's not in the web root.

If you give more details about what you're trying to achieve, we might be able to give more specific advice.

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Shawn Chin
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  • hello Shawn chin than a lot for your help but its still not working i try using href="file:///tmp/hello.xls", but as u said it not working i want the users to go to this web page and be able to download this file how can i fix the reference in order to work on any web browser thanks in advance for your help – roy Nov 11 '11 at 14:40
  • Is the file stored in the webserver? – Shawn Chin Nov 11 '11 at 14:44
  • the file is stored in a linux server and my web application is running on jboss unders the same server – roy Nov 11 '11 at 14:53
  • Then you shouldn't be using `file://`. You will have to move the file to a directory that can be served by your webserver. I'm not familiar with jboss, but perhaps this will help: http://docs.jboss.org/jbossas/guides/webguide/r2/en/html/ch08.html – Shawn Chin Nov 11 '11 at 14:58
  • Hey Shawn Chine hope ur doing well, i got that working on Jboss, just wanna ask you if you have any clue or reference to deploy such files under Jetty webserver, because i have to run it over Jetty as well, thanks a lot for your help – roy Nov 14 '11 at 11:08
  • Googling for "jetty static files" gave me http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JETTY/Static+Content and http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JETTY/Newbie+Guide+to+Jetty#NewbieGuidetoJetty-FileServer%2COneHandler – Shawn Chin Nov 14 '11 at 11:15
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Make sure your path to the xls file is correct via the href link.

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