read an external file into a variable as a sting

[Sarah Atkinson]

I have a path to a file located on another server, I want to load the contents into a variable as a sting
how do i do this?

[Sarah Atkinson]

i have tried to use get but that doesn't work
it just returns an object

var file=$.get(URL);
alert(file);

[Sarah Atkinson]

i have tried this too and it comes back empty
$.ajax({
url: URL,
success: function(data){alert("Data Loaded: " + data); },
dataType:'html'
});

[astupidname]

If you want to read the contents of the file within the javascript on your page, use php to retrieve the remote files contents:

relay.php file:

<?php
//>relay.php

$file = $_GET['file'];
if (is_string($file) && strlen($file)) {
    $fc = @file_get_contents($file);
    header('Content-type: text/html');
    echo ($fc) ? $fc : 'ERROR LOADING FILE';
}

?>

Then access the relay.php file from ajax, sending it a 'file' GET parameter:

$.ajax({
    url: 'relay.php?file='+ URL,
    cache:false,
    success: function(data){
        alert("Data Loaded: " + data);
    },
    dataType:'html'
});