SharePoint & JavaScript - The "Open with Explorer" issue

Question

This is a JavaScript/SharePoint issue. I have a similar question in the SharePoint StackExchange community but I haven't got anything over there in months. This particular issue is related to SharePoint 2010.

To the ones not aware, there is standard a functionality in SharePoint that allows users to open Document Libraries with Windows Explorer, which is very handy when you want to upload lots of documents or move file/folders around.

When the user clicks a button called "Open with Explorer", most of the time, the folder opens in Windows. Common answers like "Try restarting WebClient service" will not work, once users do not have permissions to do almost anything in their work PC's.

After researching the SharePoint JavaScript files I found how this functionality is supposed to work:

After clicking the "Open with Explorer" button, some functions will be called, but here is where the "magic" should happen:

function NavigateHttpFolderCore() {
    httpFolderDiv = document.createElement("DIV");    
    ...
    document.body.appendChild(httpFolderDiv);
    httpFolderDiv.onreadystatechange = NavigateHttpFolderCore;     
    httpFolderDiv.addBehavior("#default#httpFolder");

    d = httpFolderDiv.navigateFrame("https://sharepointsite.com/sites/site1/docLib", "_blank");
    if(d == "OK"){
        ...
    }
    ...
}

From above:

addBehavior - not supported by IE 11, Chrome and Firefox, only IE 10 and older. If using IE 11, the <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"> will take care of it.
#default#httpFolder - a behaviour(?), apparently not used anymore nowadays (obsolete)
navigateFrame - this either return the string "OK" if successful, meaning that the "Open With Explorer" will indeed Open in Windows Explorer, or it returns the string "FAILED" and the "your client does not support opening this list with windows explorer" will popup in my screen.

My main concern is, why sometimes navigateFrame return "OK" and other times "FAILED"?

Does anyone know what happens "inside" navigateFrame or can I check it? Any ideas?

Thank you

Burst Burst · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-24T18:35:59

In my case the problem was in IE which blocked navigateFrame() call due to CORS restrictions. I dealt with SharePoint 2013 and provider-hosted add-in: I tried to open WebDAV folder (having the URL containing SharePoint host domain) with JavaScript from a PHAI web application in another domain -- PHAI domain. If you've got this problem in IE (version up to 10 inclusively) and you try to run your JavaScript code in a domain different from SharePoint one, try to add your site to 'Trusted Sites' and set 'Access data sources across domains' to 'Disable' or 'Prompt'.

Excerpt from MSDN :

Behaviors are subject to cross-frame security rules where a document cannot refer to a behavior on another server or another domain. In this case, the addBehavior method returns E_ACCESSDENIED. For more information, see the Security section in the Introduction to DHTML Behaviors article.

SharePoint & JavaScript - The "Open with Explorer" issue

1 Answers