In Dart, what's the simplest way to get the bytes of a local file for a web app?

Question

(I'm new to web stuff, I'm sorry for any botched terminology)

I want to make a Gameboy Emulator web app, and the first step in that is reading the bytes of the ROM. Eventually, the user will be able to select the ROM, but right now, I just have 'tetris.gb' in the directory along with 'index.html' and 'out.js' (the output of main.dart run through dart2js).

I've been trying to find an easy way to read the bytes of 'tetris.gb,' and the 'dart:io' library looked promising, but it's not available for browser-based applications.

Answer 1

In the browser you have 2 options.

• Load a file from the server using an HTTP GET request.
  See for example Using dart to download a file

  • Load a file from the users computer using file upload functionality.
    See for example File input and Dart

dart:io can only be used on the server or in console or Flutter apps, but not in code running in the browser.