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Questions about extract.autodesk.io - taking a file path instead of choosing with the file chooser

I'm trying to modify the project so I could plug in a file path or a file as a variable instead of the user choosing the model file. So I'm looking for where the actual upload happens.
In submitProject():
https://github.com/cyrillef/extract.autodesk.io/blob/master/www/js/app.js#L129
I see that it just sends (with an ajax request) an object that holds the file name and unique identifier but not the actual binary file.
In here:
https://github.com/cyrillef/extract.autodesk.io/blob/master/www/js/upload-flow.js#L34
there's r.upload(), is this the actual upload of the model?
Does it start to upload the file right as you press ok in the file chooser?
Is there a way to give it a file path to upload instead of uploading with the form and file chooser?

The author of this sample should be on Christmas vacation, I just downloaded and setup the extractor sample on my machine, with a little debug into the code, let me try to answer as much as I can.
In general, I think some of your understanding is correct, but let me explain a little more:
For a local file to be uploaded and translated, there are actually 2 steps of actual “upload”.
As you mentioned, when you press ok in the file chooser, yes, the file will be first uploaded to the "extractor" server as you noticed by some methods like r.upload(), it’s actually using a JavaScript library call “flow.js", which provides multiple simultaneous, stable, fault-tolerant and resumable/restartable file uploads via the HTML5 File API. I am not expert on this, but you can check that module about how to use it to upload a file.
By now, your file is uploaded from client to the "extractor" server, but if you want to translate the file to "svf", the file is required to be uploaded to Autodesk Server(OSS), that is done by clicking “submit my project” buton, when you click this button, as you mentioned, from client, it will call the method submitProject() in https://github.com/cyrillef/extract.autodesk.io/blob/master/www/js/app.js, this method will send a post request of “/api/projects” to the "extractor" server, if you check the code at server side https://github.com/cyrillef/extract.autodesk.io/blob/master/server/projects.js , you can see the extractor server actually upload the file to Autodesk OSS, and then triggers the translation service.

This feature (passing a URL string vs a file binary) is already implemented. You can use the uri: edit box and paste your file URL there. It supports http(s) or S3 uri with access token.
The physical upload happens in this file, whereas the SubmitProject() code sends only information as JSON. The JSON object only contains a reference to the file which was uploaded using flow.js. But would contain the uri string if you had choose that method.

Js - Cache file, open it, detect changes and upload

I have a file structure on a web page, and look for a solution for the following scenario:
The chosen file should be downloaded in browser cache and opened (if it's an excel document, open with excel, etc.).
Now when the user changes the file, it should be detected and the file should be uploaded again.
Is this even possible with JavaScript?
If yes, where do I store the file (temporary internet folder?) and how do I detect the changes?

The only way for this to work you would need to have the user select the downloaded file, and then check for modification.
HTML
<label for="excelFile">Select the excel file: </label><input type="file" id="excelFile" />
JS
//Change event to detect when the user has selected a file
document.querySelector("#excelFile").addEventListener("change",function(e){
//get the selected file
var file = this.files[0];
//get the last modified date
var lastModified = file.lastModified;
//check lastModified against stored lastModified
//this assumes you store the last mod in localStorage
if(localStorage['excelLastMod'] < lastModified){
//It has modified update last mod
localStorage['excelLastMod'] = lastModified;
//do upload
}
});
If you know your user is using Chrome you can use Chrome's FileSystem api

The way you describe it: No, that is not possible in JavaScript.
It sounds like you want an FTP client.
When the user changes the file, it should be detected and the file should be uploaded again.
That is not possible due to JS having almost no access to the file system.
The only way you can access a file at all is by requesting the user to select one, see:
How to open a local disk file with Javascript?
So the most you could do would be:
File is downloaded.
Based on browser & settings, file may be opened automatically, or not.
User is presented with a file selection dialog that they can use when they are done editing.
Compare selected file to file on server and upload if changed.
After downloading a file, you have no control over it.
For applications that have a protocol registered (such a steam://, for example), you might be able to request the URL being opened in a program, but that would require an if per file type/program.
Detecting file changes is not at all possible (because you have no access to the file), and uploading again requires the user to select the file manually, using a file dialog.

Thanks for your help and ideas. I saw a software (https://www.group-office.com/) which includes this function so there has to be way to do it.
New Idea, using chrome filesystem api (#Siguza already said it):
Create file from servers database on users local filesystem with filesystem api
open file locally (should work with filesystem:http://www.example.com/persistent/info.txt, or?)
poll last changes of file every x seconds
if change detected, upload file back to servers database
I saw some problems with excel locking the files Check if file has changed using HTML5 File API
but except of that this should work, shouldn't it?

Is it possible to retrieve text files from HTML app directory without HTTP request or <input>?

I'm working on an HTML/javascript app intended to be run locally.
When dealing with img tags, it is possible to set the src attribute to a file name with a relative path and thereby quickly and easily load an image from the app's directory. I would like to use a similar method to retrieve a text file from the app's directory.
I have used TideSDK, but it is less lightweight. And I am aware of HTTP requests, but if I remember correctly only Firefox has taken kindly to my use of this for local file access (although accessing local images with src does not appear to be an issue). I am also aware of the FileReader object; however, my interface requires that I load a file based on the file name and not based on a file-browser selection as with <input type="file">.
Is there some way of accomplishing this type of file access, or am I stuck with the methods mentioned above?

The browser will not permit you to access files like that but you can make javascript files instead of text files like this:
text1.js:
document.write('This is the text I want to show in here.'); //this is the content of the javascript file
Now call it anywhere you like:
<script type="text/javascript" src="text1.js"></script>

There are too many security issues (restrictions) within browsers making many local web-apps impossible to implement so my solution to a similar problem was to move out of browsers and into node-webkit which combines Chromium + Node.js + your scripts, into an executable with full disk I/O.
http://nwjs.io/

[edit] I'm sorry I thought you wanted to do this with TideSDK, I'll let my answer in case you want to give another try to TideSDK [/edit]
I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for but I will try to explain my case.
I've an application which allow the user to save the state of his progress. To do this, I allow him to select a folder, enter a filename and write this file. When the user open the app, he can open the saved file, and get back his progress. So I assume this enhancement is similar of what you are looking for.
In my case, I use the native File Select to allow the user to select a specific save (I'm using CoffeeScript) :
Ti.UI.currentWindow.openFileChooserDialog(_fileSelected, {
title: 'Select a file'
path: Ti.Filesystem.getDocumentsDirectory().nativePath()
multiple: false
})
(related doc http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated/#!/api/Ti.UI.UserWindow-method-openFileChooserDialog)
When this step is done I will open the selected file :
if !filePath?
fileToLoad = Ti.Filesystem.getFile(scope.fileSelected.nativePath())
else
fileToLoad = Ti.Filesystem.getFile(filePath)
data = Ti.JSON.parse(fileToLoad.read())
(related doc http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated/#!/api/Ti.Filesystem)
Please note that those snippets are copy/paste from my project and they will not work without the rest of my code but I think it's enough to illustrate you how I manage to open a file, and read his content.
In this case I'm using Ti.JSON.parse because there is only javascript object in these files but in your case you can just get the content. The openFileChooserDialog isn't mandatory, if you already know the file name, or if you get it from another way you can use Ti.Filesystem in your own way.

how to secure img src path when user clicks on view source using javascript?

How to secure the src path of the image when clicks on inspect element so that user should not get to know about the actual src path..please help me with the solution and it should be done with javascript only no other tags should be used.

You can convert image into base 64 data URIs for embedding images.
Use: http://websemantics.co.uk/online_tools/image_to_data_uri_convertor/
Code sample:
.sprite {
background-image:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAA... etc );
}

This is commonly done server-side, where you have an endpoint that serves the image file to you as bytes...
You can store the images in a private location on the server where IIS/<your favourite web server> doesn't have direct access to it, but only a web app, running on it, with the required privilege is authorized to do so.
Alternatively people also "store" the images in the database itself and load it directly from there.
In either case, the response which has to be sent back has to be a stream of bytes with the correct mime type.
Edit:
Here are a couple of links to get you started if you are into ASP.NET:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/34084/Generic-Image-Handler-Using-IHttpHandler
http://aspalliance.com/1322_Displaying_Images_in_ASPNET_Using_HttpHandlers.5 <- this sample actually does it from a database.
Don't let the choice of front-end framework (asp.net, php, django, etc) hinder you. Search for similar techniques in your framework of choice.
Edit:
Another way if you think html5 canvas is shown here: http://www.html5canvastutorials.com/tutorials/html5-canvas-images/
However you run into the same problem. Someone can view the image url if they can see the page source. You'll have to revert to the above approach eventually.

Fetch geotag from uploaded images with Google Apps Script?

The idea: at the moment I have a script which watch for new images uploaded (from smartphone or tab) to a specific folder. The script moves image to some subfolder depending on image's name and append a row with corresponding data to specific spreadsheet.
Is it possible to fetch geo information from uploaded to Google Drive images (using smartphone) to put them to the spreadsheet? Searched over the API, but look there is no native function for that. Any 3rd-party solutions?

It is possible to accomplish your task (to get geo-data of uploaded images) using GAS. There is no GAS service performing it and I am almost sure now there is no a 3rd-party solution for your task. A brief scheme for the task is the following
to traverse all files in the image folder.
to open every file by using the DocsList.getFileById method
to check if the file data has required MIME-type. I assume, that JPEG files are most wanted to you. They have the image/jpeg MIME-type. The getContentType method of the BLOB class returns the data type.
for filtered files, to get the data by using the BLOB.getBytes method, find in the data the EXIF-matadata (see bellow), parse it and get the geotags. The geo-info stored as metada inside of image file and usually has EXIF format. There is a number of Javascript libraries which are able to read EXIF of JPEG files, for instance, this one. You can either write your own code which will perform this step or modify the exist library (if the library license permits it). The exist library modification should not be a problem.
to publish the retrieved geo-information to a spreadsheet.