How To Load A Text File In Javascript?

I'm creating a simple WebGL project and need a way to load in models. I decided to use OBJ format so I need a way to load it in. The file is (going to be) stored on the server and

Solution 1:

You can use XMLHttpRequest to fetch the file, assuming it's coming from the same domain as your main web page. If not, and you have control over the server hosting your file, you can enable CORS without too much trouble. E.g.

To scan line-by-line, you can use split(). E.g. Something like this ...

var req = newXMLHttpRequest();
req.open('GET', '/your/url/goes/here');
req.onreadystatechange = function() {
  if (req.readyState == 4) {
    if (req.status == 200) {
      var lines = req.responseText.split(/\n/g);
      lines.forEach(function(line, i) {
        // 'line' is a line of your file, 'i' is the line number (starting at 0)
      });
    } else {
      // (something went wrong with the request)
    }
  }
}

req.send();

Solution 2:

If you can't simply load the data with XHR or CORS, you could always use the JSON-P method by wrapping it with a JavaScript function and dynamically attaching the script tag to your page.

You would have a server-side script that would accept a callback parameter, and return something like callback1234(/* file data here */);.

Once you have the data, parsing should be trivial, but you will have to write your own parsing functions. Nothing exists for that out of the box.