Create a textfile from the input of an html-form with the browser (client-side)

Question

I have an html site with a form in it and I want the user to be able to create a text/xml file depending on the input. But I wan't to avoid setting up a webserver only for this task.

Is there a good way, to do that, e.g. with Javascript? I think you can't create files with Javascript, but maybe create a data url and pass the text, so the user can save it to file?

Or is there another way to achieve this simple task without a webserver?

Answer 1

Solved it, somehow. I create a data url data:text/xml;charset=utf-8, followed by the XML.

function createXML() {
    var XML = 'data:text/xml;charset=utf-8,<MainNode>';
    var elements = document.getElementsByTagName('input'),i;
    for (i in elements) {
        if (elements[i].checked == true) {
            XML += elements[i].value;
        }
    }
    XML += '</MainNode>';
    window.open(XML);
}

So the url looks like data:text/xml;charset=utf-8,<MainNode><SubNode>...</SubNode>...</MainNode>

Unfortunately this doesn't work for me on Chromium(Chrome) and on Firefox. It just displays the XML instead of showing a save dialog. But I think that's because of my settings and at least you can save it as a XML-file manually.

Answer 2

I haven't tried this but it should work.

1. After getting form data, system will call page A.
2. page A will have javascript that gets query strings and builds the page accordingly.

3. After finishing page build, user can save current page with following statement in javascript

   document.execCommand('SaveAs',true,'file.html');