Insert textfile content into textarea?

choozo

Hi folks,

I have been searching for a solution to this 'problem' for a while, but found nothing yet.

What I want to do is to have a 'Browse' button i a form bringing up a File Select dialog (no problem so far). When the textfile is selected, the content of that file should be inserted into a textarea in the form, preferrably without having to 'reload' the form.

This probably involves some JavaScript/DOM actions which is fine. Has anybody here done something similar before?

Cheers :-)

stevena

I don't think it is possible to do it without reloading the page because any server-side code (including PHP) is processed before the page is loaded. Here's a program you could use:

<head>
<title>Reading Files</title>
</head>
<body>
<?
if(!($file_path)) {
include("form.htm");
}
else {
print("<textarea rows=\"25\" cols=\"60\">"); //you can change the attributes you want
$readFile=fopen($file_path,"r");
while(!feof($readFile)) {
$currLine=fgets($readFile,255);
print("$currLine");
}
print("</textarea>");
}
?>
</body>

For form.htm, you could use something like this (you can change the form as long as the file input field has the name "file_path"):

choozo

Thanks for you input Steven, and I know that would work but it was not what I had in mind. I'm a bit reluctant towards 'reloading' the page to make this work. And yes, doing this serverside would call for a reload.

Hopefully I find a way to do this with JavaScript and DOM by calling a function that reads the file and insert the content by doing some sort of 'formname.fieldname.write(filecontent)'.

Cheers :-)

stevena

It's not possible to do this (at least, not with a server-side language) because all of the code is processed BEFORE the page is loaded. So, that wouldn't work.

You could use ActiveX Objects. The problem with them is that they are only on IE4+ on the Windows platform and that they show an alert that the user has to agree with for the action to perform. If you really wanted to do it, though, you could. Here's the script:

<head>
<title>Reading Files</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
var fsoObj=new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");

function readFile(path) {
var readFile=fsoObj.OpenTextFile(path);
document.forms[0].contents.value=readFile.ReadAll();
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<form>
<textarea name="contents" rows="23" cols="60"></textarea>
<br /><input type="file" name="path" onchange="readFile(this.value);" />
</form>
</body>

Hope that helps!

Happy coding! 🙂

choozo

Thanks Steven.

I'm well aware of the 'limitations' on server side scripting, and was aiming at something done client side like JavaScript/DOM.

ActiveX and other IE specifics are just out of the question since that defeats the cross browser (and platform) conformity I aim at. Doing all this stuff on a Linux platform with PHP/Apache/Oracle also rules out IE specifics :-)

I'll just read up on the DOM-1 specs, and see if I can find something there. DOM-1 should at least be supported by the majority of browsers.

Cheers :-)

stevena

It is (considering that DOM-1 was supported since JavaScript 1.1), but it's impossible to go completely cross-browser/platform.

Happy coding! 🙂