How to create javascript File object for local CSV file to read in and convert to JSON?

Question

I am working in ReactJS, my app is currently running locally with Create React App. I have a .csv file in my project src folder that I need to read in and convert to an array of javascript objects using Papaparse, but can't figure out how to create a File object to pass into the Papa.parse() method. The File documentation seems to all refer to creating a new file or reading a file passed by a user through drag and drop, etc. I can't find a reference to creating a File by pathname. I was previously successfully reading a json file stored in the same place in the src folder, but now need to switch to reading csv and converting to array of JS objects. There is no problem with the formatting of the .csv, I copied several lines of it as a multiline string and it was correctly parsed to json with Papa.parse(), but I don't understand how to pass in a File.

Answer 1

You are dealing with data on your server, not data the user is picking from a file <input>. Use URLs, not File objects.

You need to give the CSV file a URL (how you do that depends on the particular server you are using, this question seems to cover it if you are using the Webpack development server).

Then you need to pass that URL a per the documentation to Papa Parse.

Papa.parse("http://example.com/file.csv", {
    download: true,
    complete: function(results) {
        console.log(results);
    }
});