Getting content of a local file without uploading [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

How to open a local disk file with JavaScript? (7 answers)

Closed 12 months ago.

I'm writing an offline webapp that allows user to select local file, modify it and than saves a copy also locally. Is it possible without any server (I can upload a file and return base64 of it, but it's not much of a offline)? App needs to work only on Google Chrome, so maybe I should look here?

Answer 1

The HTML5 File API might prove usefull

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/dndfiles/

Answer 2

 input = document.getElementById(inputId);          

 var reader = new FileReader();

 reader.onload = function (e) {
     base64 = e.target.result;
 };

 reader.readAsDataURL(input.files[0]);

where input is an element <input type='file'></input>. Also works for an input that can select multiple files.

Answer 3

To work with files in the browser I use downloadify. In order to make it work with paths containing "file://" you need to allow for downloadify.swf access to the file system on the settings.