Read local txt file from node_helper.js

sdetweil

@Aphamguin what is the problem? I don’t see anything obvious

also, see my Sample Module, which sends thru node_helper and gets response back which is shown.

https://github.com/sdetweil/SampleModule

if u are just showing text, you should use innerText, so the dom handler doesn’t have to examine your text only to find no html tags… (save cycles for other work)

Aphamguin

@sdetweil it seems to break the module and MM. Nothing shows up on the screen when I run it.
Thanks for the sample module. It’s a really helpful template that I thought MM would have given us.
It’s a simple module, but I’m just implementing its functionality in phases. At the moment I just want it to read from a local txt file, parse it into an array, and then display a chunk of text by accessing that array. So yes I’m just showing text. What is innerText? Do I just do elem.innerText(“text”)
instead of elem.innerHTML(“text”)?

sdetweil

@Aphamguin yes elem.innerText.

not sure what you mean by breaks mm…

if u email me the three files I will find what the problem is.

same user ID on gmail. rename the .js as .txt

sdetweil

@Aphamguin you did set a position for your module in config, right? else the output doesn’t get used

sdetweil

@Aphamguin the sample mm provides (hello world), uses the nunjuks template approach

Aphamguin

@sdetweil I have emailed you the main js file, the helper, and the txt file, all as txt files. I hope you got it.
I did set a position, yes.
Where can I get the sample mm? What is the nunjuks template approach?

sdetweil

@Aphamguin my sample module
https://github.com/sdetweil/SampleModule

I don’t have any links to nunjuks.

but basically you create a layout template with locations for variables, and then supply the data, and the template engine does that formatting
see the helloworld module in the defaults folder

I am working on your module. the initial problem is the data filename has to have a path, else it will be in the MagicMirror folder.

but there is also an easier way to process your data.

in a couple hours I will get it back to you the same way

Aphamguin

@sdetweil Ok I’ll play around with it then.
Wow great. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

sdetweil

@Aphamguin sent back

Aphamguin

To conclude this issue, when reading from a local txt file with node_helper.js, you have to make sure the file name has a path. And then when parsing it, you can parse it easily by checking for carriage returns (\r) to see if if its a windows file. Here is a snippet of the solution:

this.rawText = fs.readFileSync(__dirname + '/localTxtFile.txt').toString()
this.isWindows = (this.rawText.indexOf('\r') == -1) ? false:true
this.variable= this.rawText.split(this.isWindows ? '\r\n\r\n' : '\n\n')