Site interacting with local system

Question

I have a web application running on an internal server, to be accessed only via internal network, through browser on Ubuntu machines.

My real need is to send a signal to the ports (whether parallel, serial or USB) of the computers that are accessing the application through the browser, controlled by this WEB application. I think of doing this by sending commands directly from the browser to Linux, to run the applications responsible for this interaction with the hardware.

If there is no direct way to do this, I could create an application that is reading a database or a TXT file generated by the WEB application and when there is a change, take the appropriate steps at the hardware level.

What would be the best way for me to solve this problem?

Answer 1

Some browsers implement specific hardware access mechanisms.

In the case of Chrome, there is a API to access USB and other devices. Then you could write an extension to perform the operations you need on the hardware.

With the extension working and installed, your web page can communicate with it by sending messages, for example through custom events.

It kind of works that way. If the page needs to access the hardware, it triggers a particular event, which is captured by the extension which in turn accesses the hardware via USB and returns the event to the page.