Importing a file in JavaScript (not browser or HTML) - javascript

I know it seems like this question may exist elsewhere, but I haven't been able to find a solution for purely JS as a scripting language.
Is there a way for me to import a file (locally or url) like a .csv that I can then operate on?
I'm looking for a purely javascript solution, without HTML or jQuery.
for example, if there was a file called example.txt on your computer with the line "this is an example file, can you import this text?" and you had to print the 4th word in the file, how would you do that with only JS?
Or a .csv that you needed to read off you computer and return a json object of, how would you read in that CSV?
Thanks in advance for any help!

Related

Turn CSV file into array using Vanilla Javascript without input element

I am trying to read turn a CSV file, the file is on local, could be same folder with the script file. Since I am writing JSX for photoshop, I couldn't use any other library. And there are a lot of tutorial out there using input element which is not what I need. The path of the file could be hard coded. What I am trying to do is read the CSV, and take out some data. Please advise!
Let me explain it clearly!
I am writing JSX for photoshop script which has no browser element - input tag something like that. And it must be pure Javascript no library such as jQuery. I did a lot of google search what they do is taking the input tag from browser let user select the CSV file, I just want the file path is hard code, it is a fixed path and filename. And I don't see any tutorial for read CSV file and turn into array via vanilla javascript.
You can use the File class. How this works is explained in the ExtendScript toolkit docs which are installed on your computer alongside Creative Cloud. An online version can also be found here. (The scripting guide references this under the File object on page 110, referring to a section about JavaScript on different platforms on page 32, which then refers to the ExtendScript docs.)
Example:
const file = new File("/c/Users/user/Desktop/text.csv");
file.encoding = 'UTF-8';
file.open("r");
const contents = file.read();
file.close();
alert(contents);

Is there no simple way to read a local JSON or a TEXT file using plain Javascript?

I have a local JSON file. I want to create an object of that file using JS.
I tried finding some solutions and they are simply too complicated
An answer suggests that "Being able to read a local file from your browser would be a major breach of security..." so does that mean that there is NO simple way to read a local file without using FileReader or XMLHttpRequest !?
I am very disappointed as I come from a Python background and there, you can simply use a one liner "open" function to read a file.
(PS: Please do not use any AJAX or jQuery in your answers/comments)
EDIT: Somewhat more detailed description.
I have 4 files in a folder. An HTML, a CSS, A JS and one JSON file. What I want is whenever, I try to load the HTML page in a browser, my JS creates a JSON object of my local JSON file which I can display in my HTML body.

How to import rows from .xlsx and write them in specific places in .docx using Electron?

Intro
Hi, I was looking for answer in the whole Internet (in some way I kind of feel that I know every question in Stack Overflow), but the answers were never appropriate to what I'm looking for. I was trying to avoid posting question here, but situation forced me to do this.
Sorry if the answer is simpler than I think.
I'm in the middle of building my first app in Electron using JavaScript. I think that I should describe it in few words, so flam:ngo™ (which is projects name) should work like this:
User will upload two files:
file with tables (like XLSX or DOC)
file with data and blank spaces (which will be used as a template)
App will import from tables.
Now app should let user choose which rows he's interested in and where in uploaded file he wants them to be placed.
flam:ngo save document in PDF (or DOC).
Clue
Right now I need solutions just for myself and in little simpler form. For now I need flam:ngo just to work with one specify XLSX and with one DOC template, but I stuck. I know which rows in document I will always need, but I don't know what should I write to specify in JS's code that I need exactly this ones (like hey, app, pick only this one, this one and maybe this one) while JS is reading file and I don't know how to create new DOC (or PDF) file, how to write data in specified blank spaces and then at the end: how to save it in direction which I should choose for every time I'm using an app - everything in one, maybe two, processes.
Ending
Could you, please, help me: for now I have implemented file uploader which is importing file in XLSX and which is saving it as CSV, XML oraz HTML. What should I do to keep moving forward?
I really appreciate your help!
PS. For better explanation:
For now this should look like this:
1. "template.docx" is uploaded in the core
2. user uploads .xlsx
3. app reads tables and select rows chosen in code
4. app puts data from chosen rows in specify places
5. app saves file > new life of the app :)
Ok, so it's been a while and app has been already written by me. Maybe this will help someone in the future:
Solution
Packages that helps me with this issue was:
js-xlsx which converts my file to simple HTML file, where cells from my XLSX template file have always the same ID (which was important for me to work with document templates).
officegen which helps me write brand new document based on earlier prepared template.
Rest of it was just Vanilla JS.

How to convert CSV to TCSV file in python

A buddy of mine is trying to convert a CSV file full of data into something called a tcsv file for use with a service he is developing.
I could barely find anything on TCSV files except for here This seems to describe what makes a TCSV file.
So my question is, would I be able to use python, (or JS, as in the example) in order to convert a csv to tcsv file? Is this something I can do with code? If someone could explain what a tcsv file is and how it's used that would help, thank you!
Tell your buddy the whole point of .csv files is that they are unstructured apart from the commas separating fields and the newlines demarcating new records.
A clue to how useful the .tscv file extension may be at some future point in time is in the title given by the person on github (your link) experimenting with them: "Simpler, streamable, more compact, easier to read, gzip friendlier than JSON. Hopefully..."
If your buddy insists on a more human-readable form of data he can transform them pretty easily into xml, or even JSON, and he'll very likely have more joy than following that github post's apparently aborted experiment.
That tcsv stuff doesn't look easier to read than well-formatted JSON to me. Though xml seems to win hands-down if written with readability in mind.
See http://json.org/example.html.

Including a text file in Chrome extension and reading it with Javascript

I want to create a Chrome extension that contains a text file with static data (a dictionary of English words) and I want the extension to be able to parse that file. I've only managed to find FileReader class, but it looks like it's made for reading user-selected files, while in my case I always want to read the same exact file included in extension's package. As a workaround, I can convert the file to a Javascript array of strings declared in some .js file included in the manifest, but in that case the whole contents would be loaded into memory at once, while what I need is to read the data line by line. Is there any way to do this?
You can go the FileReader route, since you can obtain the Entry of your package directory with chrome.runtime.getPackageDirectoryEntry().
However, an easier way is to just make a XHR to your file using chrome.runtime.getURL() with a relative path. The first way is useful when you want to list files, though.

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