Possible to open and write to local files using javascript?

Question

At work I have to repeat this same process multiple times:

1. Open a certain Dreamweaver file.
2. Look for all <p> tags and replace then with <h1> tags.
3. Look for all </p> and replace with </h1>.
4. Look for the string 'Welcome' and replace with 'goodbye'.
5. Look for '0:01:00' and replace with '01:00'.
6. Copy everything in that file.
7. Create a new Dreamweaver file and paste everything in the new file.
8. Save the new file in a given directory and call it a certain name, which can be provided as a variable.

I don't need to run the JavaScript from a browser. It can be a JavaScript file which I just double click on the desktop.

Is it possible for me to do this with JavaScript / jQuery?

• putvande: No I don't think you can. Why don't you use Dreamweavers find and replace function?
• Stephen Thomas: It's definitely possible using, e.g. node.js and various libraries, but that's way too much work. Much easier from the command line using, e.g. sed
• Jorg: it might also be possible using the browser, see gist.github.com/abicky/1089708 and developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Code_snippets/File_I_O. I would not recommend it though, it seems labourious.
• user2817200: @putvande because I need to do it for multiple files and even more files down the road. Would be easy if there is just a script which I can run which will go through all the files and do the same thing to all the files in, say a given directory.

Answer 1

There are many other programming languages that you could accomplish this task with but if you really want to use Javascript then you could do the following:

var fs = require('fs');
if(process.argv.length < 4) {
 console.log('Usage: node replace.js fromFilePath toFilePath');
 return;
}
from = process.argv[2];
to = process.argv[3];
fs.readFile(from, { encoding: 'utf-8' }, function (err, data) {
 if (err) throw err;
 console.log('successfully opened file ' + from);
 var rules = {
 '<p>': '<h1>',
 '</p>': '</h1>',
 'Welcome': 'goodbye',
 '0:01:00': '01:00'
 };
 for(var index in rules) {
 console.log('Replacing ' + index + ' with ' + rules[index] + '...');
 data = data.replace(new RegExp(index, 'gi'), rules[index]);
 console.log('Done');
 }
 console.log("Result");
 console.log(data);
 console.log("Writing data to " + to);
 fs.writeFile(to, data, function (err) {
 if (err) throw err;
 console.log('It\'s saved!');
 });
});

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Download node.js from here
2. Install it
3. Create a file in C:\replace.js (Win) or ~/replace.js (Mac OS)
4. Put the code from above in replace.js
5. Open cmd (Ctrl+R on Win) or Terminal (on Mac OS)
6. Type node C:\replace.js <fileToReadFrom> <fileToSaveTo> on Win or node ~/replace.js <fileToReadFrom> <fileToSaveTo> on Mac OS
7. Done