CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascripthtmlweb-applications
DrHell
DrHell

Reputation: 481

Reading and using data from user files in Javascript (web application), without uploading them

I'd like to have a way for a webpage -which is generated dynamically by my server- to read all the files in a specific user folder, manipulate them using javascript, within the web browser, and using them to show to the user some results (specific correlations between the data, dependent on the context and sometimes some graphs, drawn using these correlations).

Communication with the server about these data is neither required nor desired. Actually, since all the manipulations needed can be done via javascript and the files can be huge, for now I absolutely don't want that their content is uploaded to the server. Therefore there are no security risks (at least none that I can see).

Server side, I'm only interested to save the name of the folder, so that the user (who is registered) doesn't need to select the files one by one or to select them again every time a new page is dynamically created.

For now, the only hopes to find a solution that I have been able to gather are about using the Chrome FileSystem API (but I'd prefer a general solution, not dependent on a specific browser) or creating an extension that the user should install to use this feature when visiting the website (which, for me, is maybe even worse than relying on a specific browser).

So I wonder if there is a way to implement this feature using only pure javascript and HTML5 and using neither extensions nor browser dependent solutions.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 147

Answers (1)

Abrar
Abrar

Reputation: 7222

Due to security reasons, JavaScript running in the browser should not be used to access the filesystem directly. But definitely you can access it using Node's fs module (but that's on the server side).

Another way is, if you let the user pick files using the <input type="file"> tag then you can use the File API to fetch the contents. But I think that is not what you are looking for.

Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#Security

Upvotes: 1

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