Read text file in JavaScript from server

Question

i have an m3u file that i wanna extract information from it. can i read as a text file? Any idea how to read a text file or m3u deployed in a server in JavaScript or HTML line by line and get information from it ?

Answer 1

I would recommend using jQuery for this.

If you're trying to read the file line by line then use:

<script>
    $.get("item.txt", function(data) {

    });
</script>

Where the argument data is the resultant file information. Even if you are just trying to get the data byte by byte this would work fine. I am not super familiar with .m3u files, but this advice should help.

Answer 2

I created a basic example using just Javascript, starting with the example that I linked in the comments above. Just read in the text file using FileReader and create a loop in the onload function, where you parse out the records that you want. I based my file spec off of wikipedia, using the Example 6.

Result: https://jsfiddle.net/1sce9mv6/6/

Javascript:

   document.getElementById('file').onchange = function() {

   var file = this.files[0];

   var reader = new FileReader();
   reader.onload = function(progressEvent) {
     // Entire file for debugging
     //console.log(this.result);

     // By lines
     var lines = this.result.split('\n');

     console.log('File read.');

     //Check if this is an m3u file
     if (lines[0].includes("#EXTM3U")) {
       console.log("File header found!");

       //Go through each line
       for (var line = 1; line < lines.length; line++) {

         //Process line
         if (lines[line].includes("#EXTINF")) {

           //print full line
           console.log(lines[line]);

           //split each line into the elements
           var currentLine = lines[line].substring(7).split(',');
           console.log("Runtime: " + currentLine[0]);
           console.log("Song:" + currentLine[1]);
         } else {
           continue;
         }
       }
     } else {
       console.log(lines[0]);
       console.log("Not m3u file...");
     }
   };
   reader.readAsText(file);
 };

HTML:

<input type="file" name="file" id="file">

References:

• How to use Javascript to read local text file and read line by line?
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U#Examples