I'm using client-side Javascript and want to get a list of all the files in a folder that I believe is hosted on the same server as my .html file. I'm very unfamiliar with the terminology so I apologize in advance if I'm inaccurate or just plain wrong.

I currently use d3.text("js/data/nodes#.csv", "text/csv", someFunction) to load in a data file to work with. I figure that since all the filenames I want are templated the same way, I can hack a solution by looping through all possible numbers and only get the filenames of valid calls, like so:

function getDirList() {
    var possiblePathsList = something predetermined;
    var directoryList = [];

    possiblePathsList.forEach(function(path){
        if (isPath(path)) { directoryList.push(path); }
    });

    return directoryList;
}

function isPath(path){
    d3.text(path, "text/csv", function(data){   
        return (data !== null);
    });
}

Because I can get a list in this very rubbish way, I presume there must be some (much, much more) elegant method of achieving my goal. Is this possible?

I'm using client-side Javascript and want to get a list of all the files in a folder that I believe is hosted on the same server as my .html file. I'm very unfamiliar with the terminology so I apologize in advance if I'm inaccurate or just plain wrong.

I currently use d3.text("js/data/nodes#.csv", "text/csv", someFunction) to load in a data file to work with. I figure that since all the filenames I want are templated the same way, I can hack a solution by looping through all possible numbers and only get the filenames of valid calls, like so:

function getDirList() {
    var possiblePathsList = something predetermined;
    var directoryList = [];

    possiblePathsList.forEach(function(path){
        if (isPath(path)) { directoryList.push(path); }
    });

    return directoryList;
}

function isPath(path){
    d3.text(path, "text/csv", function(data){   
        return (data !== null);
    });
}

Because I can get a list in this very rubbish way, I presume there must be some (much, much more) elegant method of achieving my goal. Is this possible?

• javascript
• csv
• d3.js
• directory

Share Improve this question Follow asked Oct 1, 2014 at 20:45 Null-UsernameNull-Username 53944 silver badges1919 bronze badges 1

• Not out of the box! Remember that you are making an HTTP request to your server which implements an endpoint, in this case serving a static file. The server you have must implement a directory listing endpoint if you want a directory list. What's the server software or your server? Apache, Express(nodejs),...??? – cbayram Commented Oct 1, 2014 at 20:52

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 3

By definition if you're using client side javascript, it doesn't have access to the server's folder structure. You could write a separate ajax call or something that would have a server side script (in whatever langauge) that would go through the directories and print them out to a json file that you would then be able to process with your javascript there. Something like this:

ajax.php:

$directory = "temp/";

$dir = opendir($directory);

$structure = array();

while($file = readdir($dir)){
  $structure[] = $file;
}

print json_encode($structure);
exit();

Then you will have some javascript that calls that script and parses through the json file