I am trying to convert a .txt deocument into an array.
The document has names in it and is structured like this:
Name1
Name2
Name3
The program has to read the lines and the output should be
["Name1","Name2","Name3"].
I have looked all over the internet, but most solutions just involve node.js, which i cannot install on the computer I need the software on, or some complex xmlhttp code I do not understand. I am just looking for a simple solution.
Can anybody help?
You could create an <input type="file"> for opening a file from your computer, read it with a FileReader and split() the result by newline (with for example regex /\r?\n/) to become an array of words.
const openFile = (e) => {
const reader = new FileReader(); // filereader
reader.readAsText(e.target.files[0]); // read as text
reader.onload = () => {
const text = reader.result;
const result = text.split(/\r?\n/); // split on every new line
console.log(result); // do something with array
};
};<input type='file' accept='text/plain' onchange='openFile(event)'>You can try it out in this fiddle.
You could also accomplish this in another (newer) way as suggested in the comments, using .then.
const openFile = (e) => {
e.target.files[0].text().then((t) => {
const outcome = t.split(/\r?\n/);
console.log(outcome);
});
};<input type='file' accept='text/plain' onchange='openFile(event)'>Since you won't use node, I am assuming you're running your code on a browser. And the file from an <input type="file"/>
<html>
<input type="file" id="inputFile">
<script>
const inputFile = document.querySelector('#inputFile');
inputFile.addEventListener('change', () => {
const fileReader = new FileReader();
fileReader.onload = e => {
const array = e.target.result.split('\n');
console.log(array);
};
fileReader.readAsText(inputFile.files[0], 'UTF-8');
});
</script>
</html>
To fetch the file contents you can use the fetch API in js which is pretty simple ( just pass the file url inside as parameter ) and clean to use .. Moreover to solve your issue regarding converting the text extracted from the file into an array you can use string.split method !
async function getFile(fileURL){
let fileContent = await fetch(fileURL);
fileContent = await fileContent.text();
return fileContent;
}
// Passing file url
getFile('file.txt').then(content =>{
// Using split method and passing "\n" as parameter for splitting
let array = content.trim().split("\n");
console.log(array);
}).catch(error =>{
console.log(error);
});
After getting text you can use
string.splitmethod and when used with.trim()method will remove extra spaces too !
Read MDN docs for information about fetch API