Why do I need a server?

[nishantag...@gmail.com]

HI, I'm following this tutorial on polymer-project.org. In it it says that I need a web server to test my pages.

I'm sorry if this is a very stupid question, but why do I need a web server? Why don't the pages work if you simply open the index.html files locally in the browser? I just want to understand. By my reasoning it should work the same way whether it is loaded from a remote server or the local filesystem.

[piturc...@gmail.com]

Its probably due to the fact the without a server the imports wouldn’t be allowed under the browser’s same origin policy.

You can bypass that by opening Chrome with --allow-file-access-from-files flag:

Just set up a shortcut with the following target: C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome --allow-file-access-from-files and it should work

[nishantag...@gmail.com]

Thanks for your reply :)

I did as you said and ran chrome with the flag, but it did not have any effect. The page still appears blank when I open the file locally but works properly if I open it through the local server. Any idea why?

[nishantag...@gmail.com]

Actually, I had a different window of chrome open when I tried that so it did not work as the flag wasn't enabled. I tried it again after closing all chrome windows and it worked. My bad. Thanks for your help :)

[piturc...@gmail.com]

Yeah, everything needs to be closed before. Also the next time you open the browser, in the shortcut instead of C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome --allow-file-access-from-files you may see C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --allow-file-access-from-files. Remove the .exe again

[Nishant George Agrwal]

Thanks. Actually I'm on linux. Ubuntu to be precise. So for reference, on Ubuntu the command to run would be "google-chrome --allow-file-access-from-files".