How to read a local text file?

Question

I’m trying to write a simple text file reader by creating a function that takes in the file’s path and converts each line of text into a char array, but it’s not working.

Answer 1

How to read a local file?

By using this you will load a file by loadText() then JS will asynchronously wait until the file is read and loaded after that it will execture readText() function allowing you to continue with your normal JS logic (you can also write a try catch block on the loadText() function in the case any error arises) but for this example I keep it at minimal.

async function loadText(url) {
    text = await fetch(url);
    //awaits for text.text() prop 
    //and then sends it to readText()
    readText(await text.text());
}

function readText(text){
    //here you can continue with your JS normal logic
    console.log(text);
}

loadText('test.txt');

Answer 2

Try creating two functions:

function getData(){       //this will read file and send information to other function
       var xmlhttp;

       if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
           xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();               
       }           
       else {               
           xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");               
       }

       xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = function () {               
           if (xmlhttp.readyState == 4) {                   
             var lines = xmlhttp.responseText;    //*here we get all lines from text file*

             intoArray(lines);     *//here we call function with parameter "lines*"                   
           }               
       }

       xmlhttp.open("GET", "motsim1.txt", true);
       xmlhttp.send();    
}

function intoArray (lines) {
   // splitting all text data into array "\n" is splitting data from each new line
   //and saving each new line as each element*

   var lineArr = lines.split('\n'); 

   //just to check if it works output lineArr[index] as below
   document.write(lineArr[2]);         
   document.write(lineArr[3]);
}

Answer 3

After the introduction of fetch api in javascript, reading file contents could not be simpler.

reading a text file

fetch('file.txt')
  .then(response => response.text())
  .then(text => console.log(text))
  // outputs the content of the text file

reading a json file

fetch('file.json')
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(jsonResponse => console.log(jsonResponse))     
   // outputs a javascript object from the parsed json

Update 30/07/2018 (disclaimer):

This technique works fine in Firefox, but it seems like Chrome's fetch implementation does not support file:/// URL scheme at the date of writing this update (tested in Chrome 68).

Update-2 (disclaimer):

This technique does not work with Firefox above version 68 (Jul 9, 2019) for the same (security) reason as Chrome: CORS request not HTTP. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS/Errors/CORSRequestNotHttp.

Answer 4

var input = document.getElementById("myFile");
var output = document.getElementById("output");


input.addEventListener("change", function () {
  if (this.files && this.files[0]) {
    var myFile = this.files[0];
    var reader = new FileReader();
    
    reader.addEventListener('load', function (e) {
      output.textContent = e.target.result;
    });
    
    reader.readAsBinaryString(myFile);
  }   
});

<input type="file" id="myFile">
<hr>
<textarea style="width:500px;height: 400px" id="output"></textarea>

Answer 5

You can import my library:

<script src="https://www.editeyusercontent.com/preview/1c_hhRGD3bhwOtWwfBD8QofW9rD3T1kbe/code.js?pe=yikuansun2015@gmail.com"></script>

then, the function fetchfile(path) will return the uploaded file

<script src="https://www.editeyusercontent.com/preview/1c_hhRGD3bhwOtWwfBD8QofW9rD3T1kbe/code.js"></script>
<script>console.log(fetchfile("file.txt"))</script>

Please note: on Google Chrome if the HTML code is local, errors will appear, but saving the HTML code and the files online then running the online HTML file works.

Answer 6

Adding to some the above answers, this modified solution worked for me.

<input id="file-upload-input" type="file" class="form-control" accept="*" />

....

let fileInput  = document.getElementById('file-upload-input');
let files = fileInput.files;

//Use createObjectURL, this should address any CORS issues.
let filePath = URL.createObjectURL(files[0]);

....

function readTextFile(filePath){
    var rawFile = new XMLHttpRequest();
    rawFile.open("GET", filePath , true);
    rawFile.send(null);

    rawFile.onreadystatechange = function (){
        if(rawFile.readyState === 4){
            if(rawFile.status === 200 || rawFile.status == 0){
                var allText = rawFile.responseText;
                console.log(allText);
            }
        }
    }     
}