I am creating a web app where I already know the location of a file that needs to be uploaded. Note that all I have is the path (example: Users/username/Downloads or Users/username/Documents) or something like that. How can I get Javascript to read that file as a File object or as a binary string so that I can POST it to a server.

Additionally, this file is not a simple file like a JSON or a txt file. This file would usually be a Microsoft Word file.

CodePudding user response：

Due to security reasons, JavaScript executed from web apps have very limited access to the file system.

The best you can do is have the user select a file via a file input.

If having the web app user install a browser extension is acceptable, a browser extension may have more access to the user's file system. Here is an example extension that accesses a user's file system more directly: https://github.com/buggyj/savetiddlers

CodePudding user response：

I think you can't to read the any files from the front-end by javascript, It is not allowed to do so. But you can get the file path from front-end and then pass it to the app framwork or back-end to processing. Beacuse the app's framework or back-end has the ability to access system files. Whereafter, you can POST to the contents of the file to the web server.