How to read local xml file using javascript?

Question

Maybe the problem is that i wrote path to my file incorrectly, i'm using Linux, do i have to write path in some different way?

<script type="text/javascript">
  function func(){
    var xmlFile = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xmlFile.open("GET", "/home/kat/course/data.xml", false);
    xmlFile.send();
    xmlDoc = xmlFile.responseXML;

    document.getElementById("result_field").value = xmlDoc;
  }
</script>

Answer 1

The file needs to be in the webroot. So if you have the code in /var/www and your site is 'somedomain.com/index.html' you will need to have the xml file in the same /var/www directory and access it like "GET", "somedomain.com/anotherfolder/data.xml"... You can't access server directories from JS... The javascript runs on the client side, not on the server side, so the file needs to be accessible on the website.

Answer 2

There could be two problems. The url must be {your_server_domain}/home/kat/course/data.xml , and the document.getElementById("result_field") must be an input/textarea to accept value attribution, otherwise, use innerHTML .

Ps: Your local server domain usually is: localhost or 127.0.0.1:80 .

Answer 3

JavaScript can only access files your server is serving. Unless you are serving /home/kat/course/data.xml , you're going to need to move data.xml before your JavaScript can access it. Once you move it to a location being served, it will be accessible via an XHR.

As a side note, the responseXML property of an XHR is a Document object, not a string. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/XMLHttpRequest/responseXML