VLCFileUrl

Open vlc-file://foo with VLC as http://foo.

Rationale

So you're building a simple webapp to play video files (i.e. a minimal DIY plex-like media server).

The HTML5 <video> tag can natively stream .mp4 files, .webm files, etc.

But what about other types of video files, like .mkv? Unfortunately, there's no good way to do this in the browser.

VLC can play .mkv files, but downloading the file first isn't convenient -- we want to stream it. VLC can also stream .mkv URLs, but how to we get the browser to hand off the URL to VLC (without downloading the file)?

This is the problem. There's no way to tell your browser that an http:// URL to a specific type of file should be handled by an external application.

But if we invent our own URL scheme, we can register an external application to handle it natively. That's what this app is for.

This app registers the URL scheme vlc-file://, rewrites those URLs as http:// and hands them off to VLC for streaming.

Simple

This is the simplest possible app which can do this. No joke, here's the entirety of the source code:

import Cocoa

@main
class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {

    @IBOutlet var window: NSWindow!
    
    func application(_ application: NSApplication, open urls: [URL]) {
        for url in urls {
            let httpUrlString = url.absoluteString.replacingOccurrences(
                of: "vlc-file://",
                with: "http://"
            )
            let job = Process()
            job.executableURL = URL(fileURLWithPath: "/usr/bin/open")
            job.arguments = ["-a", "VLC", httpUrlString]
            try? job.run()
            job.waitUntilExit()
        }
        NSApp.terminate(self)
    }
}

License

MIT, baby 😎.