Drag and Drop files between Solid pods and/or the local file-system (FS)

[j-steinbach]

Pitch

• It is cumbersome to upload/download/transfer files between pods, the local FS and applications
  • There also exists a barrier of entry here: My mom wont use Bashlib to update her profile picture :)
• Users expect to be able to drag&drop files from/to folders and applications
  • This is how it is done in the different OS' like Windows, Linux, Mac, Android
  • This is also how Cloud/Storage applications do it (Google Drive, ...)
• Managing files on a Solid pod should be fun, simple and friction-less
  • Ideally people wont notice that they are using Solid!

Desired solution

A file-management app that allows to browse the pod contents similar to how the OS works (this already exists). Files can be dragged between the app (Solid) and the local OS. Files can also be dragged between two apps (two browser windows pointing to different pods).

I am not sure if this should be a stand-alone app or some kind of default "data-transfer layer"/standard file manager' that comes with each pod to allow a user to get quickly started.

Acceptance criteria

• Drag a file into a pod A from the local OS
• Drag that file from pod A to pod B
• Drag the file from pod B to the local OS again

Pointers

@phochste had some interesting ideas and remarks:

That would be a nice app that just did that. When the file sizes grow above several GB it becomes a question how to support that in the browser (how to guarantee the files actually arrive complete even when the browser session stops). Can you add it as challenge? For iRODS (supercomputing) clients they have special tools that do that ..it requires some sort of orchestration. Solid is not supercomputing but in the Namidas project (i am part of) we try to see what the limits are how research data can be shared.

See also https://www.globus.org/

• how to tunnel between pods?
• add a file preview to the cursor
• access-control :)
• file-size
• what happens if a browser crashes?
• multiple files, selections
• file metadata

Scenarios

[josephguillaume]

Only meets part of the requirements, but solid-ui has a drag and drop widget.

https://github.com/SolidOS/solid-ui/blob/6c36e7182fc9724f99aa6766d7eef2a32f100bdb/src/widgets/dragAndDrop.js#L174

It's used e.g. in an attachment list component https://github.com/SolidOS/solid-ui/blob/6c36e7182fc9724f99aa6766d7eef2a32f100bdb/src/widgets/buttons.ts#L845