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

This should work in almost all browsers:

var xhr=new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET","https://12Me21.github.io/test.txt");
xhr.onload=function(){
    console.log(xhr.responseText);
}
xhr.send();

Additionally, there's the new Fetch API:

fetch("https://12Me21.github.io/test.txt")
.then( response => response.text() )
.then( text => console.log(text) )