Most basic way to read file contents into a string in javascript

Question

...and I mean the MOST basic way. I have a filename, and I want to get its contents in a string called contents in a javascript funcrion in an html page. Nothing dynamic, no input fields, no onload,.. the file is called contents.txt. All I want is a javascript function to just do that: get the file contents into the string. Is there not something less than 5 lines long that does this? Firefox only. No checks, I don't care for any compatibility right now...

thanks!

Ps background: i am building a parser of some sort in JavaScript and for now I just want to test the darn thing with test data...

you have no access to your files when using js from a web browser due to some obvious security reasons — Yuval Perelman, Apr 21 '17 at 23:15
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17648871/how-can-i-parse-a-text-file-using-javascript — Slagathor The Destroyer, Apr 21 '17 at 23:17
The answer at https://stackoverflow.com/a/46129280/1541186 had it down to a couple lines using `fetch`. — ojchase, Jan 29 '21 at 08:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 22 '17 at 00:11

This is a simple approach, place the script tag at the end of the body. This will ensure the page is fully loaded before it executes.

<script>
function done()
{
    var fileContents = this.response;
}

var xmlhttp;
xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlhttp.addEventListener("load", done, false);
xmlhttp.open("GET","/contents.txt",true);
xmlhttp.send();
</script>
</body>

Most basic way to read file contents into a string in javascript

1 Answers1