Quarto preview in default projects -> 404 not found

[andrewpbray]

Description

If I create a project of type default, then try quarto preview I get this:

(base) andrewbray@MacBookPro defaultproj % ls
Defaultproj.html	Defaultproj_files	defaultproj.Rproj
Defaultproj.qmd		_quarto.yml
(base) andrewbray@MacBookPro defaultproj % quarto preview
Terminating existing preview server....DONE

Preparing to preview

Watching files for changes
Browse at http://localhost:3585/
GET: / (404: Not Found)

Is this not intended to work?

If it's helpful, here's my quarto:

(base) andrewbray@MacBookPro ~ % quarto check

[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.1: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.55.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.3.433
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.10.9 (Conda)
      Path: /Users/andrewbray/miniconda3/bin/python
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with conda install jupyter

      There is an unactivated Python environment in anaconda3. Did you forget to activate it?

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.3.0
      Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources
      LibPaths:
        - /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.3-x86_64/Resources/library
      knitr: 1.43
      rmarkdown: 2.21

[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[mcanouil]

This is an intended behaviour as you are rendering a project and serving the project from the root which expect as any website the index.html file which does not exist in the project as the only file is Defaultproj.qmd.
If you don't specify any file, Quarto can't know which to serve and currently as no fallback if there is no index.html.
So:

• use quarto preview Defaultproj.qmd
• use quarto preview then navigate to http://localhost:1234/Defaultproj.html

[andrewpbray]

Ah, thanks for explaining that, it's helpful.

This is surprising behavior to me. I try to think of default projects as similar to websites, books, and manuscripts in that they allow batch render, conditional content, and aggregated metadata. I had thought of the point in which they differed being that they lack the navigational overlay between docs that's enabled by calling on the keys website, book, and manuscript. I didn't realize that quarto preview pulls over some behavior from the other project types.

When you run quarto preview in an established website, it will serve up the most recently modified file on disk instead of index.html, correct? That behavior doesn't seem to work in type: default. That is: in that same default project, I modify a qmd, save it, preview, and it still 404s (whereas a website would not, even though the website would serve up the qmd, regardless of its filename).

Thanks for your help in understanding the behavior of quarto preview.

[mcanouil]

I have to admit that I don't know what exactly is the file preview method for book/project, but maybe there should be the same method for default project type.

[mcanouil]

I opened an enhancement issue to make quarto preview behave similarly between project types, see:

• quarto preview for default project type default to index.html even without index.qmd #6976