Angular 4: How to read content of text file with HTTPClient

I have a .txt file in my Angular 4 project directory and I want to read its content. How to do it ? Below is the code which I employed.

The file is in 'files' folder which is inside the 'app' folder. The component where i have HTTPClient code is in 'httpclient' folder which is inside 'app' folder.

Meaning 'files' folder and 'httpclient' folder are children.

The code is shown below. It not working as i m getting 404 error - 'GET http://localhost:4200/files/1.txt 404 (Not Found)'

this.http.get('/files/1.txt').subscribe(data => {
        console.log(data);
    },
        (err: HttpErrorResponse) => {
            if (err.error instanceof Error) {
                // A client-side or network error occurred. Handle it accordingly.
                console.log('An error occurred:', err.error.message);
            } else {
                // The backend returned an unsuccessful response code.
                // The response body may contain clues as to what went wrong,
                console.log(`Backend returned code ${err.status}, body was: ${err.error}`);
            }
        }
    );

Solution 1:

Try like this :

this.http.get('app/files/1.txt').subscribe(data => {
    console.log(data.text());
})

The CLI can't access docments inside the app directory your project. if you move to text document you can access the text file like assets/1.txt.

if you want to access document inside the app directory you need to add path in assets array in the .angular-cli.json

.angular-cli.json

"assets": [
  "assets",
  "app", /* add this line to access document inside the app directory */
  "favicon.ico"
]

here below is my example try like this :

this.http.get('app/home/1.txt').subscribe(data => {
    console.log('data', data.text());
})

Solution 2:

Angular 6/7

{ responseType: 'text' as 'json'}

for now works

this.http.get("app/files/1.txt", { responseType: 'text' as 'json'}).subscribe(data => {
    console.log(data.text());
})

Refer to this ticket on GitHub for the complete discussion.

Solution 3:

Just one correction to the previous answer: add "responseType: 'text'" to the options:

this.http.get("app/files/1.txt", "{ responseType: 'text' }").subscribe(data => {
    console.log(data.text());
})

Solution 4:

This is tested in Angular 6

Create a service using

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient } from '@angular/common/http'; 
//Read  text file
export interface ResultJson{

}
@Injectable({
  providedIn: 'root'
})
export class TestService {
  urlEncoded = '/Test.text';
  getText(){
    return this.http.get(this.urlEncoded, {responseType: 'text'});
  }
}

and call the service in your component like below

  resultJSON: ResultJson;
  ResultJsonString : any;
this
    .testService
    .getText()
    .subscribe((data:ResultJson) => {
         this.ResultJsonString = data;
       });

Hopefully this helps

Solution 5:

I was able to get a local file(JSON) with Angular 6 project.

Project strucuture:

|-src
|--app
|---core
|---...
|---app.module.ts
|--assets
|...

Steps:

1) Inside angular.json I've added the folder where I put the file:

 "projects": {
    "my-project": {
      "root": "",
      "sourceRoot": "src", // ** my project root is "src" folder
      "projectType": "application",
      "architect": {
        "build": {
          "builder": "@angular-devkit/build-angular:browser",
          "options": {
            // ...
            "assets": [
              "src",         // <--- ADDED THIS
              "src/assets",
              "src/favicon.ico",
              "src/manifest.json",
              "src/robots.txt",
              "src/web.config"
            ]

2) Wrote following service to get the file:

import { HttpClient } from '@angular/common/http'
import { Injectable } from '@angular/core'

@Injectable({
   providedIn: 'root'
})
export class EnvironmentService {
   constructor(private readonly _httpClient: HttpClient) {
   }

   public init(): Promise<any> {       
      return new Promise(resolve =>
         this._httpClient
         .get('file.json')
         .first()
         .subscribe((data: any) => {
            // data from JSON
            resolve()
         })
      )
   }
}

Bonus:
In case if you want to read custom environment variables(besides what standard Angular one provides) you can add above service into App.module.ts:

export function init_app(appLoadService: EnvironmentService): () => Promise<any> {
  return () => appLoadService.init()
}

@NgModule({
  // ...
  providers: [
    EnvironmentService,
    { provide: APP_INITIALIZER, useFactory: init_app, deps: [ EnvironmentService ], multi: true },
  ],
  bootstrap: [ AppComponent ]
})
export class AppModule {
}

P.S. In case of issues you can check this one.