Can I run HTML files directly from GitHub, instead of just viewing their source?

305
votes

If I have a .html file in a GitHub repository, e.g. for running a a set of JavaScript tests, is there any way I can view that page directly—thus running the tests?

For example, could I somehow actually see the test results that would be produced by the jQuery test suite, without downloading or cloning the repo to my local drive and running them there?

I know this would basically put GitHub in the static content hosting business, but then again, they just have to change their mime-type from text/plain to text/html.

12
javascripthtmlgithub
Hmm... can a GreaseMonkey script change headers? – Alex Howansky
Can you update the accepted answer on this one? There is now a way of doing this - see @niutech's answer... – Alex Dean
possible duplicate of Link and execute external JavaScript file hosted on GitHub – Troy Alford
Possible duplicate of How to see an html page on github as a normal rendered html page to see preview in browser, without downloading? – Michael Freidgeim

12 Answers

376
votes

You might want to use raw.githack.com. It supports GitHub, Bitbucket, Gitlab and GitHub gists.

GitHub

Before:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/[user]/[repository]/[branch]/[filename.ext]

In your case .html extension

After:

Development (throttled)

https://raw.githack.com/[user]/[repository]/[branch]/[filename.ext]

Production (CDN)

https://rawcdn.githack.com/[user]/[repository]/[branch]/[filename.ext]

In your case .html extension

raw.githack.com also supports other services:

Bitbucket

Before:

https://bitbucket.org/[user]/[repository]/raw/[branch]/[filename.ext]

After:

Development (throttled)

https://bb.githack.com/[user]/[repository]/raw/[branch]/[filename.ext]

Production (CDN)

https://bbcdn.githack.com/[user]/[repository]/raw/[branch]/[filename.ext]

GitLab

Before:

https://gitlab.com/[user]/[repository]/raw/[branch]/[filename.ext]

After:

Development (throttled)

https://gl.githack.com/[user]/[repository]/raw/[branch]/[filename.ext]

Production (CDN)

https://glcdn.githack.com/[user]/[repository]/raw/[branch]/[filename.ext]

GitHub gists

Before:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/[user]/[gist]/raw/[revision]/[filename.ext]

After:

Development (throttled)

https://gist.githack.com/[user]/[gist]/raw/[revision]/[filename.ext]

Production (CDN)

https://gistcdn.githack.com/[user]/[gist]/raw/[revision]/[filename.ext]

Update: rawgit was discontinued

198
votes

There is a new tool called GitHub HTML Preview, which does exactly what you want. Just prepend http://htmlpreview.github.com/? to the URL of any HTML file, e.g. http://htmlpreview.github.com/?https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/gh-pages/2.3.2/index.html

Note: This tool is actually a github.io page and is not affiliated with github as a company.

18
votes

To piggyback on @niutech's answer, you can make a very simple bookmark snippet.
Using Chrome, though it works similarly with other browsers

  1. Right click your bookmark bar
  2. Click Add File
  3. Name it something like Github HTML
  4. For the URL type javascript:top.location="http://htmlpreview.github.com/?"+document.URL
  5. When you're on a github file view page (not raw.github.com) click the bookmark link and you're golden.
7
votes

You can either branch gh-pages to run your code or try this extension (Chrome, Firefox): https://github.com/ryt/githtml

If what you need are tests, you could embed your JS files into: http://jsperf.com/

6
votes

I had the same problem for my project Ratio.js and here's what I did.

Problem: Github.com prevents files from rendering/executing when the source is viewed by setting the content type/MIME to plain text.

Solution: Have a web page import the files.

Example:

Use jsfiddle.net or jsbin.com to create a webpage online then save it. Navigate to your file in Github.com and click the 'raw' button to get the direct link to the file. From there, import the file using the appropriate tag and attribute.

<!DOCTYPE>
<html>
    <head>
        <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/qunit/git/qunit.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1 id="qunit-header">QUnit example</h1>
        <h2 id="qunit-banner"></h2>
        <div id="qunit-testrunner-toolbar"></div>
        <h2 id="qunit-userAgent"></h2>
        <ol id="qunit-tests"></ol>
        <div id="qunit-fixture">test markup, will be hidden</div>
        <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/qunit/git/qunit.js"></script>  
        <script type="text/javascript" src="https://raw.github.com/LarryBattle/Ratio.js/master/src/Ratio.js"></script>  
        <script type="text/javascript" src="https://raw.github.com/LarryBattle/Ratio.js/master/tests/js/Ratio-testcases.js"></script>  
    </body>
</html>

Live Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/jKu4q/2/

Note: Note for jsfiddle.net you can get direct access to the result page by adding show to the end of the url. Like so: http://jsfiddle.net/jKu4q/2/show

Or....you could create a project page and render your HTML files from there. You can create a project page at http://pages.github.com/.

Once created you can then access the link through http://*accountName*.github.com/*projectName*/ Example: http://larrybattle.github.com/Ratio.js/

4
votes

Here is a little Greasemonkey script that will add a CDN button to html pages on github

Target page will be of the form: https://cdn.rawgit.com/user/repo/master/filename.js


// ==UserScript==
// @name        cdn.rawgit.com
// @namespace   github.com
// @include     https://github.com/*/blob/*.html
// @version     1
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

var buttonGroup = $(".meta .actions .button-group");
var raw = buttonGroup.find("#raw-url");
var cdn = raw.clone();
cdn.attr("id", "cdn-url");
cdn.attr("href", "https://cdn.rawgit.com" + cdn.attr("href").replace("/raw/","/") );
cdn.text("CDN");
cdn.insertBefore(raw);
4
votes

You can do this easily by Modifying Response Headers which can be done with Chrome and Firefox extension like Requestly.

In Chrome and Firefox:

  1. Install Requestly for Chrome and Requestly for Firefox

  2. Add the following Headers Modification Rules:

    enter image description here

    a) Content-Type:

    • Modify
    • Response
    • Header: Content-Type
    • Value: text/html
    • Source Url Matches: /raw\.githubusercontent\.com/.*\.html/


    b) Content-Security-Policy:

    • Modify
    • Response
    • Header: Content-Security-Policy
    • Value: default-src 'none'; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline'; img-src 'self' data:; script-src * 'unsafe-eval';
    • Source Url Matches: /raw\.githubusercontent\.com/.*\.html/
3
votes

i wanted to edit html and js in github and have a preview. i wanted to do it in github to have instant commits and saves.

tried rawgithub.com but rawgithub.com was not realtime (it's cache refreshes once a minute).

so i quickly developed my own solution:

node.js solution for this: https://github.com/shimondoodkin/rawgithub

3
votes

raw.github.com/user/repository is no longer there

To link, href to source code in github, you have to use github link to raw source this way:

raw.githubusercontent.com/user/repository/master/file.extension

EXAMPLE

<html>
...
...
<head>    
<script src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/amiahmadtouseef/tutorialhtmlfive/master/petdecider/script.js"></script>
...
</head>
<body>
...
</html>
2
votes

If you have an angular or react project in github, you can use https://stackblitz.com/ to run the application online in your browser.

Enter your Github username and repository name to view the application online - stackblitz.com/github/{GITHUB_USERNAME}/{REPO_NAME}

This works even without Node_Modules uploaded to Github

Currently support projects using @angular/cli and create-react-app. Support for Ionic, Vue, and custom webpack configs are coming soon!

1
votes

This solution only for chrome browser. I am not sure about other browser.

  1. Add "Modify Content-Type Options" extension in chrome browser.
  2. Open "chrome-extension://jnfofbopfpaoeojgieggflbpcblhfhka/options.html" url in browser.
  3. Add the rule for raw file url. For example:
    • URL Filter: https:///raw/master//fileName.html
    • Original Type: text/plain
    • Replacement Type: text/html
  4. Open the file browser which you added url in rule (in step 3).
-1
votes

You can use my git-html-previewer: A while ago I found a repo that was attempting to accomplish this ... at the time it was not functional but it was very close and I was able to get it working by refactoring some of the code into es6 syntax.

https://githtmlpreview.netlify.app/