How do you read/parse a text file line by line using html/javascript?

Question

I am trying to parse a text file that contains a bunch of test questions/answers to code a multiple choice test taker.

The questions and answers are all on separate lines so I need to read each file line by line and somehow parse it by just using html/javascript/jquery.

How would I do this? THANKS!

The text file has the extension .dat but is actually a text file. Its just the format these come in and there are too many to change... http://www.mediafire.com/?17bggsa47u4ukmx

Solution

try this

function readQAfile(filename){
    $.ajax(filename,
        {
            success: function(file){
                var lines = file.split('\n');
                var questions = [];

                var length = lines.length;
                for(var i = 0; i < length; i+=2){
                    questions.push({
                        question: lines[i],
                        answer: lines[i+1] || "no answer"
                    })
                }
                window.questions = questions;
            }
        }
    );
}

to use this you'll need to be running the website on a server (a local server is fine).

Comments

[FlavorScape]

please post a sample of the text file. Why are you not using json or XML?

[A. Meshu]

I know this is a really old answer, but i wonder if you can be kind and add sort of example/demonstration for the code..