How to create and save a text file with JavaScript

Question

Do you know any cross-browser method to create and save a file with JavaScript on the client-side?

Considerations:

1. I can\'t save it on the server becau

Answer 1

Basically, you said it, "we are talking about a web application." Do you know any web applications that save a file to your hard drive (besides cookies) without showing you a download prompt first?

Having said that, browsers have started to offer a persistence API that goes beyond cookies. (See, for example, this article.) But such a solution wouldn't meet your requirement of being cross-browser.

Answer 2

we came out with a simple windows service nodejs app to be installed in the local machine. When the web application need to create a file it just sends an API call to this app using localhost and that will write the file for it. Cheers.

Answer 3

you can do that by Client side Web services just make a function in web service to create a text file in your hard drive then convert the web service in to the client side service when u do that .Net framework make a client side java script then u will be able to call the server side function using Java script in client side after that your file will not be posted in the server it will remain save in your hard drive ok

Answer 4

Your only options are to use persistance APIs from HTML5 or to create a browser plugin (activex control on IE, NPAPI plugin on others) that can do the file access for you. You could use FireBreath to do this, and it would be relatively simple if you know C++.

That said, it is a really dangerous idea; it is difficult to prevent people from using your plugin in other pages, so your plugin has to somehow be smart enough to keep itself from being abused by malicious sites that want to read (or even write) arbitrary data to your hard drive.

There is, after all, a reason why browsers don't natively support this. I'd look at HTML5.