Generating a text file

Question

This is for personal use only, so permissions/security issues can be ignored for the time being.

I have:

A "Create File" button and event listener. I'm able to successfully alert() all the information I need for the path and file name I want created.

I want:

A function to create a local file in a directory as specified by the script, e.g.:

Create "C:\Foo\Bar.txt", where C:\Foo already exists and "Bar.txt" is an empty text file.

Answer 1

so permissions/security issues can be ignored for the time being

No, actually, they can't.

Wishful thinking is nice, but whatever it is you want, you simply can't write to a local filesystem using browser JavaScript, including GreaseMonkey.

The best you can do is allow the user to save the file, by providing a link. The user can right-click and save to a file then.

<a href="data:text/plain;charset=utf-8,test%20contents%0D%0Ago%20here">Saveable</a>

you can set contents with:

function setDownloadableText(aElement, contents) {
  aElement.setAttribute('href', 'data:text/plain;charset=utf-8,' + contents);
}

Answer 2

Since you said "permissions/security issues can be ignored for the time being", here's what you can do:

• Use IE, preferably an older version (this is against all sane advice but you asked for it)
• Disable restrictions for ActiveX creation (probably the worst thing you can do in IE)
• Create a "FileSystemObject" instance and call it's "CreateTextFile" method:

var myObject = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");    
var newfile = myObject.CreateTextFile("c:\\testing.txt", false);