readTextFile

Category: File Operations

Namespace: web.files.readTextFile

Description

Reads the contents of a text file and returns it as a string. Automatically handles UTF-8 encoding.

Syntax

const content = await web.files.readTextFile({
    filePath: 'path/to/file.txt'
});

Parameters

• filePath (required) - Path to the text file to read (relative or absolute)

Returns

Promise<string> - Returns a promise that resolves with the file contents as a string

Examples

Simple example

const content = await web.files.readTextFile({
    filePath: 'config.json'
});
console.log('File content:', content);

Read and parse JSON

const jsonContent = await web.files.readTextFile({
    filePath: 'data/settings.json'
});
const settings = JSON.parse(jsonContent);
console.log('Theme:', settings.theme);

Read with error handling

try {
    const content = await web.files.readTextFile({
        filePath: 'C:\\Data\\report.txt'
    });
    console.log('File loaded successfully');
} catch (error) {
    console.error('Failed to read file:', error);
}

Use Cases

• Load configuration files (JSON, XML, INI)
• Read user-created documents
• Load template files for processing
• Read log files for display
• Import data from text files

Notes

• Automatically uses UTF-8 encoding
• Relative paths are resolved from the application executable directory
• Returns an error if the file doesn't exist
• For binary files, use other methods (not text files)
• Newlines are preserved in the returned string