Does anyone know of a tutorial on how to read data from a server side file with JS? I cant seem to find any topics on this when I google it. I tried to use but it does not seem to work. I just want to read some data from a file to display on the page. Is this even possible?
var CSVfile = new File("test.csv");
var result = CVSfile.open("r");
var test = result.readln();
Try to search for AJAX.
You can use JQuery libery
$.ajax({ url: "test.cvs", success: function() {
// do stuff when file is loaded
}
});
or if you don't want to use libraries use raw XMLHTTPRequest object (but you I has different names on different browsers
function xhr(){
var xmlHttp;
try{
xmlHttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
} catch(e) {
try {
xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
} catch(e) {
try {
xmlHttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
} catch(e) {
alert("Your browser does not support AJAX!");
return false;
}
}
}
return xmlHttp;
}
req = xhr();
req.open("GET", "test.cvs");
req.onreadystatechange = function() {
// do your stuff when file is ready
};
req.send(null);
To achieve this, you would have to retrieve the file from the server using a method called AJAX.
I'd look into JavaScript libraries such as Mootools and jQuery. They make AJAX very simple use.
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/mootools/1.2.4/mootools-yui-compressed.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
//This event is called when the DOM is fully loaded
window.addEvent("domready",function(){
//Creating a new AJAX request that will request 'test.csv' from the current directory
var csvRequest = new Request({
url:"test.csv",
onSuccess:function(response){
//The response text is available in the 'response' variable
//Set the value of the textarea with the id 'csvResponse' to the response
$("csvResponse").value = response;
}
}).send(); //Don't forget to send our request!
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<textarea rows="5" cols="25" id="csvResponse"></textarea>
</body>
</html>
If you upload that to the directory that test.csv resides in on your webserver and load the page, you should see the contents of test.csv appear in the textarea defined.