How do I load the contents of a text file into a javascript variable?

Question

I have a text file in the root of my web app http://localhost/foo.txt and I\'d like to load it into a variable in javascript.. in groovy I would do this:

Answer 1

Update 2020: Using Fetch with async/await

const response = await fetch('http://localhost/foo.txt');
const data = await response.text();
console.log(data);

Note that await can only be used in an async function. A longer example might be

async function loadFileAndPrintToConsole(url) {
  try {
    const response = await fetch(url);
    const data = await response.text();
    console.log(data);
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
  }
}

loadFileAndPrintToConsole('https://threejsfundamentals.org/LICENSE');