How to read a local text file?

Question

I am trying to write a text file reader by creating a function that takes in the file’s path and converts each line of text into character array, but it is not working

function readTextFile() {

  var rawFile = new XMLHttpRequest();

  rawFile.open("GET", "testing.txt", true);

  rawFile.onreadystatechange = function() {

    if (rawFile.readyState === 4) {

      var allText = rawFile.responseText;

      document.getElementById("textSection").innerHTML = allText;

    }

  }

  rawFile.send();

}

Can somebody tell me what’s wrong here?

Answer 1

You need to check for the status as when loading files locally with XMLHttpRequest, you don’t get a status returned because it is not from a webserver

function readTextFile(file)

{

    var rawFile = new XMLHttpRequest();

    rawFile.open("GET", “file:path to yourfile”, false);

    rawFile.onreadystatechange = function ()

    {

        if(rawFile.readyState === 4)

        {

            if(rawFile.status === 200 || rawFile.status == 0)

            {

                var allText = rawFile.responseText;

                alert(allText);

            }

        }

    }

    rawFile.send(null);

}

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