Menu of textfiles in current directory to read from.

[nouth]

Is there a way to make a drop-down list that lists all of the textfiles in the same folder as my webpage is in? I only want the textfiles because I have other filetypes in there but while typing this, it makes me wonder if I can read the webpages own file while I am viewing it at the same time and what would happen if I edited it using it and then saved it. That would make it like alive! :o

I want to display the contents of a chosen selected textfile from the menu list into a resizable textarea but all I know is <input type="file"></input> which is inconvenient and all my searches for a javascript gave me jquery, ajax and php instead.

Do I have to install jquery, ajax and php for them to work on my computer? I'm not hosting this on a server, I'm just running it locally. Like from my own computer.

I have been searching for hours but the closest I can find just javascript is this which seems to need a URL, because I tried with document.getElementById("textarea").value = readfile('test.txt'); but maybe I'm just lacking knowledge and put it in the invalid location or I'm missing something?

[pixelsoul]

You could do it with pure Javascript, but jQuery would probably make it easier (in my opinion that is).

For example, here is a jQuery script someone wrote to pull the list of files using an ajax call http://jqfaq.com/how-to-load-all-files-from-directory-using-jquery/

The same thing could be done with pure javascript, but why build a house with a hammer when you can use power tools?

I would recommend playing with it on a web server. Windows security does funny things sometimes. You can install WAMP or XAMPP on a windows server for a dev environment and it works just like an entire webserver to play around with. I would recommend hosting anything publicly on it though, it's more for dev.