Comments on: Read local file and display contents using javascript

By: Philippe Valentin

Philippe Valentin — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:45:15 +0000

Great stuff : it is exactly what I need.
Alec thank you for that
PS: I.E.9 is still not up to date regarding HTML5 (!!!)
The favorite message of Microsoft is “Please wait…”

By: ajx

ajx — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:09:38 +0000

@Xavier, I have no idea. But I would guess this is not allowed for security reasons.

By: Xavier

Xavier — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:25:59 +0000

Hi, this works fine but can you show me how I can feed the file name manually (it’s always the same, e.g c://myfile.txt) therefore no user input is necessary. Thanks much.

By: How to display the content of a local file in browser using java script ( code to be compatible for all browsers)? - feed99

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:38:57 +0000

[...] file I am selecting from my system using html file-upload input box. Referred to the below link but http://www.alecjacobson.com/weblog/?p=1645 where the code is not compatible for other [...]

By: chaitanya

chaitanya — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:27:07 +0000

IT works fine with firefox and chrome ..what is the problem with explorer..we all know xplorer suxx ..there are still dumbheads who use it..plz let us know how to make it work on xplorer ..ty

By: MEERA

MEERA — Wed, 25 May 2011 11:09:26 +0000

IT’S WORKS ONLY FOR .TXT FILE …NOT FOR IMAGE …

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 21 May 2011 13:39:31 +0000

Hi Alex,
Nice article. Update to your note “Note: This WILL NOT WORK if you load your html page as a local file. Meaning the address starts with file:/// instead of http://, for some reason the page must be served to the browser from a server.” : With Firefox 4.0.1 this works also with local html pages but sadly still not with google chrome.
Regards
Peter

By: ajx

ajx — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 22:55:11 +0000

Hi Steve,
I think the browsers are not supporting it locally on purpose, though I have no idea why. It’s seems like they must be going out of their way to block it.
Hopefully this File API turns into a universal solution…
-A

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 22:23:25 +0000

Nice article

Been playing around with this stuff for a while, why wont it work locally for Chrome even v12!! All tickety Boo with Firefox 4 and dont care about IE.
I wrote a Java Applet a while back that handles Reading of local files but it’s a hack and I am still looking for a cleaner alternative.

By: ajx

ajx — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:09:57 +0000

According to caniuse.com, you need at least firefox version 3.6. What version are you using? (On Mac you can click Firefox -> About Mozilla Firefox)