Can I read files from the disk by using Webassembly?

Question

I followed the Webassembly getting started tutorial http://webassembly.org/getting-started/developers-guide/

It worked fine and displayed the "Hello, world!" message in the browser.

Then I tried a small C++ code, that opens a text file and does the calculation (10 * 20) after reading the file.

emcc compiled the file just fine, no errors.

But when I serve the file over HTTP by running emrun, it cannot open the file.

This is what I see in the emrun web console:

Unable to open file
200

Is there any restrictions to open files from the local disk?

    [thiago@terra hello]$ cat pfile.cpp 
    #include <iostream>
    #include <fstream>
    #include <string>
    using namespace std;

    int main() {
     string line;
     int a, b, c;
     ifstream myfile("test.txt");
     if (myfile.is_open()) {
      while (getline (myfile, line)) {
       cout << line << endl;
      }
      myfile.close();
     }
     else cout << "Unable to open file" << endl;
     a = 10;
     b = 20;
     c = a * b;
     cout << c << endl;
     return 0;
    }

    [thiago@terra hello]$ emcc pfile.cpp -s WASM=1 -o pfile.html -v                                                               
INFO:root:(Emscripten: Running sanity checks)                                                                                     
clang version 4.0.0 (https://github.com/kripken/emscripten-fastcomp-clang.git c7c210fee24e0227f882337521b25b1ed9c36d5b) (https://github.com/kripken/emscripten-fastcomp.git 90b726ede4acf47c1bca089de6c79a0b8f2c5d9a) (emscripten 1.37.18 : 1.37.18)                                                         
Target: asmjs-unknown-emscripten
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/clang/fastcomp/build_incoming_64/bin
 "/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/clang/fastcomp/build_incoming_64/bin/clang-4.0" -cc1 -triple asmjs-unknown-emscripten -emit-llvm-bc -emit-llvm-uselists -disable-free -main-file-name pfile.cpp -mrelocation-model static -mthread-model posix -mdisable-fp-elim -no-integrated-as -mconstructor-aliases -v -dwarf-column-info -debugger-tuning=gdb -coverage-notes-file /tmp/tmpV3VHOz/pfile_0.gcno -nostdsysteminc -nobuiltininc -resource-dir /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/clang/fastcomp/build_incoming_64/bin/../lib/clang/4.0.0 -D __EMSCRIPTEN_major__=1 -D __EMSCRIPTEN_minor__=37 -D __EMSCRIPTEN_tiny__=18 -D _LIBCPP_ABI_VERSION=2 -Werror=implicit-function-declaration -std=c++03 -fdeprecated-macro -fno-dwarf-directory-asm -fdebug-compilation-dir /home/thiago/hello -ferror-limit 19 -fmessage-length 164 -fobjc-runtime=gnustep -fcxx-exceptions -fexceptions -fdiagnostics-show-option -nobuiltininc -nostdsysteminc -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/libcxx -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/lib/libcxxabi/include -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/compat -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/SSE -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/libc -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/lib/libc/musl/arch/emscripten -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/local/include -isystem/home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/SDL -o /tmp/tmpV3VHOz/pfile_0.o -x c++ pfile.cpp
clang -cc1 version 4.0.0 based upon LLVM 4.0.0 default target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
#include "..." search starts here:
#include <...> search starts here:
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/libcxx
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/lib/libcxxabi/include
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/compat
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/SSE
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/libc
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/lib/libc/musl/arch/emscripten
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/local/include
 /home/thiago/Downloads/emsdk/emscripten/incoming/system/include/SDL
End of search list.
[thiago@terra hello]$ emrun --no_browser --port 8080 .

Answer 1

Keep secure — WebAssembly is specified to be run in a safe, sandboxed execution environment. Like other web code, it will enforce the browser's same-origin and permissions policies.

So the short answer is — yes, there are restrictions. You have no access to files on disks. You just have block of memory, WASM code could be called from JS and also WASM could call JS functions.

But, there's one interesting feature in Emscripten — in the WASM you can have your own "virtual" file system with files. You can use it to "attach" some const files during compilation time and read them at the execution time. See https://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/docs/api_reference/Filesystem-API.html