[thelist] Read local file in gecko

[Andrew Clover]

<u233 at shaw.ca> wrote:

> I'm working on a project to build a gecko-based application that needs to open 
> an XML file from the user's hard drive and read it's DOM tree. The 
> application resides on the user's hard drive too

> I've tried XMLHttpRequest

As the name implies, this only works with HTTP. (As the name doesn't 
imply, though, it doesn't only work with XML!)

> document.implementation.createDocument

Should work. Mozilla doesn't support DOM Level 3 LS, but you can use 
document.open. This works for me:

   var d= document.implementation.createDocument(null, 'x', null)
   d.load('file:///C:/something.xml');

> and <object />.

Should work. The trick is that you still have to use the window.frames 
array to access the document, as if it were an <iframe>; there's no 
property to get to the document from the HTMLObjectElement:

   <object data="file:///C:/something.xml"></object>

   var d= window.frames[0].document;

(Or you can just use an iframe in the same way.) Anyway note that the 
document won't be readable until you've given it time to load.

-- 
Andrew Clover
mailto:and at doxdesk.com
http://www.doxdesk.com/