Local file access with JavaScript

javascript file-access
Jared picture Jared · Dec 16, 2008 · Viewed 371.2k times · Source

Is there local file manipulation that's been done with JavaScript? I'm looking for a solution that can be accomplished with no install footprint like requiring Adobe AIR.

Specifically, I'd like to read the contents from a file and write those contents to another file. At this point I'm not worried about gaining permissions and am just assuming I already have full permissions to these files.

Answer

Horst Walter picture Horst Walter · Aug 14, 2011

Just an update of the HTML5 features is in http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/dndfiles/. This excellent article will explain in detail the local file access in JavaScript. Summary from the mentioned article:

The specification provides several interfaces for accessing files from a 'local' filesystem:

  1. File - an individual file; provides readonly information such as name, file size, MIME type, and a reference to the file handle.
  2. FileList - an array-like sequence of File objects. (Think <input type="file" multiple> or dragging a directory of files from the desktop).
  3. Blob - Allows for slicing a file into byte ranges.

See Paul D. Waite's comment below.

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