Read txt file data into javascript array

Question

I got a script that puts urls into one iframe by order:

 <script type="text/javascript">
 $(document).ready(function(){ 
 var array = ['http://www.example1.come', 'http://www.example2.com', 'http://www.example3.com'];
 var beforeLoad = (new Date()).getTime();
 var loadTimes = [];
 $('#1').on('load', function() {
 loadTimes.push((new Date()).getTime()); 
 $('#1').attr('src', array.pop());
 if (array.length === 0) { 
 $.each(loadTimes, function(index, value) {
 $("#loadingtime"+index).html(value - beforeLoad); 
 });
 }
 }).attr('src', array.pop());
 });
 </script>

I got a txt file with a list of urls. The urls in that file are written in a column (1 column, each url starfs from new line). How can i replace the 'var array' in the javascript with the content of that txt file?

Answer 1

This is the basic gist, you'll want to embed any code that you want to run after the file is retrieved where I placed the comment.

$.get("your_url", 
 function(data) {
 var array = data.split(/\r\n|\r|\n/) //regex to split on line ending
 var beforeLoad = (new Date()).getTime();
 var loadTimes = [];
 //.... rest of your code here
 }
);

Note that this doesn't do any error handling if the file isn't there, and you may want to rewrite it to use jQuery's "Promise" interface described here.

• Matt Browne: +1 for accounting for all the different possible line endings.

Answer 2

Use jQuery's get method to request the file directly from the server, or use get to call a php script that parses the file into a friendly format such as JSON.

$.get('file.txt');

If you parse the url's into JSON format, then when it is received you can easily use the urls.

$.get('file.txt', function(data){
 obj = JSON.parse(data);
 // ....
});