View local datasets/directories

[ShrimpCryptid]

Use Case

Allow users to load local datasets or collections by either picking a directory or dragging and dropping a directory into the browser

Acceptance Criteria

Possible APIs here: https://web.dev/patterns/files/open-a-directory Note that there's a modern version which is only available in Chromium browsers. We'll likely need to use a fallback or use the old webkitdirectory API.

• [x] Experiment with the directory APIs to find one that allows reading from a directory AND preserves the directory hierarchy.
• [x] Rewrite Dataset and/or Collection to allow handling both filesystem objects or URLs. (some sort of unified interface?)
• [x] Add loading from filesystem to the Load modal.
• [ ] Change dataset/collection URL behavior.

Details

• We originally looked at starting a web server to serve files over, but the configuration required gets pretty extensive:
  • If users access one of our hosted builds of TFE, then all requests must be made over HTTPS.
  • Users would need to run a script that generates self-signed certificate keys and then start the local server.
  • Users would also need to allow access to untrusted websites in their browser.

[ShrimpCryptid]

• Should local collections be able to specify paths to datasets hosted over URL? (Hybrid local + remote files)

[ShrimpCryptid]

There is a working prototype for this but the PR is currently in draft because there are some big differences in the user experience by browser. See this ticket for more detail: https://github.com/allen-cell-animated/timelapse-colorizer/issues/379

The crux is that loading very large datasets over a network drive can be extremely slow and is not a cancelable operation, even when refreshing the page. On certain non-Chromium browsers (Safari, Firefox) this gets even worse because we cannot tell how many files need to be loaded.