How do I check if file exists in jQuery or pure JavaScript?

Question

How do I check if a file on my server exists in jQuery or pure JavaScript?

Answer 1

All the other answers can fail due to cache!

Making a HTTP request to a file on server can be intercepted with HTTP cache and the cached response is then returned. But the file may be deleted on the server in the meantime, so ignoring cache may return false positive results.

Proper solution would be to create non-cached HTTP HEAD request. Nik Sumeiko's answer uses no-cache header which means that the response can be cached, but must be revalidated before reuse. In this case the server may return 304: Not Modified, which is not 200: OK and thus false negative.

To avoid cache, the correct header is Cache-Control: no-store

File can exist without HTTP 200 response

You should also keep in mind that redirection (301: Moved Permanently, 307: Temporary Redirect or 308: Permanent Redirect) may occur, so the file can exist elsewhere and may be returned from different location: depending on the use-case, one may choose to follow redirection instead of returning false in this case.

Also keep in mind that background requests will be blocked if you check file existence on different domain and its CORS policy is not opened to your server. In this case 403: Forbidden is usually returned, which doesn't mean file does not exist but file is unavailable. Last but not least, the same applies to 500: Internal Server Error response, which means that the HTTP server failed to handle the request, but the file can be available otherwise, like by FTP.

The following code will return true if the file exists, false if not or undefined if the file is unavailable or redirected:

const fileExists = file =>
  fetch(file, {method: 'HEAD', cache: 'no-store'})
  .then(response => ({200: true, 404: false})[response.status])
  .catch(exception => undefined);

fileExists("yourFile.html").then(yes => yes && alert("yourFile.html exists"));

// or in the async scope...
let yourFileExists = await fileExists("yourFile.html");
if(yourFileExists) console.log("It is there!")
else if(yourFileExists===false) console.log("Nope, it was deleted.");
else console.log("You are not worthy the answer, puny human!");

Modern and obsolete approaches

Since we live in the future now, I would also recommend:

• $.ajax() obsolete, don't use in new projects
• XMLHttpRequest() obsolete, don't use in new projects
• fetch() modern approach, use it if you are free to choose

Note GET/POST methods (like <img src...>) are not appropriate here as they waste network traffic by downloading the file (imagine the worst scenario with high resolution photo and user with paid mobile data in area with poor connectivity)

Note Modern PWA approach is to use Cache API with serviceWorker's fetch event which intercepts the communication between the client and HTTP cache. In the example in the link, there should be something like

if(event.request.cache=="no-store") {
    // avoid cache storage and pass the request in the chain
    // client - cache storage - HTTP cache - server
    return fetch(event.request);
}

Without this, the cache settings may be ignored and there may be no way to detect the remote file existence from the main thread with the serviceWorker running - illustrated here.

Answer 2

Here's my working Async Pure Javascript from 2020

function testFileExists(src, successFunc, failFunc) {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.onreadystatechange = function () {
        if (this.readyState === this.DONE) {
            if (xhr.status === 200) {
                successFunc(xhr);
            } else {
                failFunc(xhr);
            }
        }
    }
    // xhr.error = function() {
    //     failFunc(xhr);
    // }
    // xhr.onabort = function() {
    //     failFunc(xhr);
    // }
    // xhr.timeout = function() {
    //     failFunc(xhr);
    // }
    xhr.timeout = 5000;           // TIMEOUT SET TO PREFERENCE (5 SEC)
    xhr.open('HEAD', src, true);
    xhr.send(null);               // VERY IMPORTANT
}
function fileExists(xhr) {
    alert("File exists !!  Yay !!");
}
function fileNotFound(xhr) {
    alert("Cannot find the file, bummer");
}
testFileExists("test.html", fileExists, fileNotFound);

I could not force it to come back with any of the abort, error, or timeout callbacks. Each one of these returned a main status code of 0, in the test above, so I removed them. You can experiment. I set the timeout to 5 seconds as the default seems to be very excessive. With the Async call, it doesn't seem to do anything without the send() command.

Answer 3

With jQuery:

$.ajax({
    url:'http://www.example.com/somefile.ext',
    type:'HEAD',
    error: function()
    {
        //file not exists
    },
    success: function()
    {
        //file exists
    }
});

EDIT:

Here is the code for checking 404 status, without using jQuery

function UrlExists(url)
{
    var http = new XMLHttpRequest();
    http.open('HEAD', url, false);
    http.send();
    return http.status!=404;
}

Small changes and it could check for status HTTP status code 200 (success), instead.

EDIT 2: Since sync XMLHttpRequest is deprecated, you can add a utility method like this to do it async:

function executeIfFileExist(src, callback) {
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest()
    xhr.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if (this.readyState === this.DONE) {
            callback()
        }
    }
    xhr.open('HEAD', src)
}

Answer 4

I wanted a function that would return a boolean, I encountered problems related to closure and asynchronicity. I solved this way:

checkFileExistence= function (file){
    result=false;
    jQuery.ajaxSetup({async:false});
    $.get(file)
        .done(function() {
           result=true;
        })
        .fail(function() {
           result=false;
        })
    jQuery.ajaxSetup({async:true});
    return(result);
},

Answer 5

This is an adaptation to the accepted answer, but I couldn't get what I needed from the answer, and had to test this worked as it was a hunch, so i'm putting my solution up here.

We needed to verify a local file existed, and only allow the file (a PDF) to open if it existed. If you omit the URL of the website, the browser will automatically determine the host name - making it work in localhost and on the server:

$.ajax({

    url: 'YourFolderOnWebsite/' + SomeDynamicVariable + '.pdf',
    type: 'HEAD',
    error: function () {
        //file not exists
        alert('PDF does not exist');

    },
    success: function () {
        //file exists
        window.open('YourFolderOnWebsite/' + SomeDynamicVariable + '.pdf', "_blank", "fullscreen=yes");

    }
});

Answer 6

An async call to see if a file exists is the better approach, because it doesn't degrade the user experience by waiting for a response from the server. If you make a call to .open with the third parameter set to false (as in many examples above, for example http.open('HEAD', url, false); ), this is a synchronous call, and you get a warning in the browser console.

A better approach is:

function fetchStatus( address ) {
  var client = new XMLHttpRequest();
  client.onload = function() {
    // in case of network errors this might not give reliable results
    returnStatus( this.status );
  }
  client.open( "HEAD", address, true );
  client.send();
}

function returnStatus( status ) {
  if ( status === 200 ) {
    console.log( 'file exists!' );
  }
  else {
    console.log( 'file does not exist! status: ' + status );
  }
}

source: https://xhr.spec.whatwg.org/

Answer 7

It works for me, use iframe to ignore browsers show GET error message

 var imgFrame = $('<iframe><img src="' + path + '" /></iframe>');
 if ($(imgFrame).find('img').attr('width') > 0) {
     // do something
 } else {
     // do something
 }

Answer 8

Here's how to do it ES7 way, if you're using Babel transpiler or Typescript 2:

async function isUrlFound(url) {
  try {
    const response = await fetch(url, {
      method: 'HEAD',
      cache: 'no-cache'
    });

    return response.status === 200;

  } catch(error) {
    // console.log(error);
    return false;
  }
}

Then inside your other async scope, you can easily check whether url exist:

const isValidUrl = await isUrlFound('http://www.example.com/somefile.ext');

console.log(isValidUrl); // true || false

Answer 9

I use this script to check if a file exists (also it handles the cross origin issue):

$.ajax(url, {
       method: 'GET',
       dataType: 'jsonp'
         })
   .done(function(response) { 
        // exists code 
    }).fail(function(response) { 
        // doesnt exist
    })

Note that the following syntax error is thrown when the file being checked doesn't contain JSON.

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token <

Answer 10

JavaScript function to check if a file exists:

function doesFileExist(urlToFile)
{
    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('HEAD', urlToFile, false);
    xhr.send();

    if (xhr.status == "404") {
        console.log("File doesn't exist");
        return false;
    } else {
        console.log("File exists");
        return true;
    }
}

Answer 11

This doesn't address the OP's question, but for anyone who is returning results from a database: here's a simple method I used.

If the user didn't upload an avatar the avatar field would be NULL, so I'd insert a default avatar image from the img directory.

function getAvatar(avatar) {
    if(avatar == null) {
        return '/img/avatar.jpg';
    } else {
        return '/avi/' + avatar;
    }
}

then

<img src="' + getAvatar(data.user.avatar) + '" alt="">

Answer 12

First creates the function

$.UrlExists = function(url) {
	var http = new XMLHttpRequest();
    http.open('HEAD', url, false);
    http.send();
    return http.status!=404;
}

After using the function as follows

if($.UrlExists("urlimg")){
	foto = "img1.jpg";
}else{
	foto = "img2.jpg";
}

$('<img>').attr('src',foto);

Answer 13

So long as you're testing files on the same domain this should work:

function fileExists(url) {
    if(url){
        var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
        req.open('GET', url, false);
        req.send();
        return req.status==200;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

Please note, this example is using a GET request, which besides getting the headers (all you need to check weather the file exists) gets the whole file. If the file is big enough this method can take a while to complete.

The better way to do this would be changing this line: req.open('GET', url, false); to req.open('HEAD', url, false);

Answer 14

I was getting a cross domain permissions issue when trying to run the answer to this question so I went with:

function UrlExists(url) {
$('<img src="'+ url +'">').load(function() {
    return true;
}).bind('error', function() {
    return false;
});
}

It seems to work great, hope this helps someone!

Answer 15

For a client computer this can be achieved by:

try
{
  var myObject, f;
  myObject = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
  f =   myObject.GetFile("C:\\img.txt");
  f.Move("E:\\jarvis\\Images\\");
}
catch(err)
{
  alert("file does not exist")
}

This is my program to transfer a file to a specific location and shows alert if it does not exist

Answer 16

A similar and more up-to-date approach.

$.get(url)
    .done(function() { 
        // exists code 
    }).fail(function() { 
        // not exists code
    })

Answer 17

This works for me:

function ImageExist(url) 
{
   var img = new Image();
   img.src = url;
   return img.height != 0;
}

Answer 18

i used this script to add alternative image

function imgError()
{
alert('The image could not be loaded.');
}

HTML:

<img src="image.gif" onerror="imgError()" />

http://wap.w3schools.com/jsref/event_onerror.asp

Answer 19

What you'd have to do is send a request to the server for it to do the check, and then send back the result to you.

What type of server are you trying to communicate with? You may need to write a small service to respond to the request.