Ability to open a file directly using a URL

[AbdealiLoKo]

We're trying to setup a online developmenr environment for our users - and are trying code-server.

We're using it for static HTML pages for website development, and I was hoping to add a button on the HTML pages which says "Edit this page on code-server".

I was hoping to setup that up, I could provide the path / URL to code-server ... something like:
mycodeserver.domain.com/?file=project/README.md
And it would open that particular file in the code-server when the button is clicked..

I couldn't find any documentation or notes about whether this is possible right now

NOTE: I did see #1960 - but it didn't seem the similar

Edit: Should also support line and column syntax, for example: http://code-server:port/path=/dir/sub/file.ext:line:col

[code-asher]

Yeah I don't think this is currently possible it but it seems straightforward enough to implement.

[nhooyr]

So this was implemented in #1292

Will become more visible with #2179

[code-asher]

I think this is for editing a file from a link on a website or something in code-server. So clicking it would launch code-server and then open that file. Actually it would be even cooler maybe if we could handle web+code-server:// URLs and then they open in your existing code-server (or a new one if it's not open).

[nhooyr]

Oh my bad. I thought we supported ?path= for this or something along those lines @code-asher

In regards to the scheme URL, see #1571

[code-asher]

We have ?folder= and ?workspace= but nothing for individual files yet.

I should have linked that issue! Maybe we just roll this up into that one.

[nhooyr]

I think they're different enough, will reopen this.

[dkebler]

Just giving my two cents that this is a worthy enhancement. A lot of doc sites themes/builders have built in opening the corresponding file in a github repo for editing from the rendered page like this https://geekdocs.de/usage/configuration/ (see Edit this page link). If opening a file directly from url worked in code-server one could use this feature by just supplying the configuration values. I've already tried and it kinda works sans being able to open the exact page.

  geekdocRepo: https://my.domain.net
  geekdocEditPath: ?folder=/files/content

renders
https://my.domain.net/?folder=/files/content/_index.md

which sadly does not open the page for editing. Might be nice if it opened the root folder tree in naviator and that file in the editor.

[JammSpread]

I think if code-server were to implement this feature, the query param folder should be replaced with a single param named path. I just think it would be more straightforward and wouldn't be as confusing as having two.
And maybe possibly @dkebler's comments:

Might be nice if it opened the root folder tree in naviator and that file in the editor.

could be implemented via an option.

[dkebler]

probably need to continue support for ?folder= but ?path= could as @JammSpread says be used for both, to load a directory (i.e. folder) in the explorer and an actual file in editor if supplied in path string.
Not sure if it's possible but if there is already an open tab then it should just load the file there instead of opening another instance.

[jkaster]

Is anyone currently working on this? Having ?path= support file names would allow me to use code-server rather than rolling my own solution, which would be a waste when code-server is so close. I haven’t looked at the code yet, but I’ll see if I can find where path is implemented. FWIW, my implementation would be ?path=/dir/file.ext:line and possibly optional column for those who would want that level of granularity.