Given the full path to a file, how you use the new Cordova file plugin?

Question

The Cordova file plugin is well documented here: http://ngcordova.com/docs/plugins/file/

The issue I'm having however, is that the methods often require a FileSystem object, and a string representing the file name. However what I have is the full path of the file which can be from any readable FileSystem. As a matter of fact, the file path is retrieved using the Cordova camera plugin( http://ngcordova.com/docs/plugins/camera/) using the destinationType Camera.DestinationType.FILE_URI.

With that said, how do I call the readAsBinaryString(FileSystem, fileName) method with just the fully resolved file path?

Answer 1

You might be looking for window.resolveLocalFileSystemURL. The File plugin uses a bit of the html5 calls to do its work.

Here's an example from a document import method I've got. (It's very simplified; the full file is up here if you're morbidly curious: https://github.com/adapt-it/adapt-it-mobile/blob/master/www/js/views/DocumentViews.js)

importFile = function (file, project) {
    var reader = new FileReader();
    reader.onloadend = function (e) {
        // do your parsing here
    };
    reader.readAsText(file);
}

window.resolveLocalFileSystemURL(fileURL,
    function (entry) {
        entry.file(
            function (file) {
                importFile(file);
            },
            function (error) {
                console.log("FileEntry.file error: " + error.code);
            }
        );
    },
    function (error) {
        console.log("resolveLocalFileSystemURL error: " + error.code);
    });

Raymon Camden also has a great blog series explaining the details of the file API as it relates to Cordova. Here's the one on reading a file: http://www.raymondcamden.com/2014/07/15/Cordova-Sample-Reading-a-text-file.