Reading HTML file in the client side

Anvil Q&A
1

What I’m trying to do:
I have an HTML file that I read from the server side, and it takes it too much time to load.
I am trying to bypass it with client side with no success. Here is the server side that works:

@anvil.server.callable
def get_HTML():

 html_string_path = 'some_file.html'
 with open(html_string_path, 'r') as f:
    html_string = f.read()
 return html_string

#Client side:
html_name = "get_HTML"
self.html_mechanic_for_gui(html_name)

def html_mechanic_for_gui(self,html_name):
    self.html_panel.remove_from_parent()
    srcdoc = anvil.server.call(html_name)
    html = "<iframe style='position:absolute;width:85%;height:100%;left:15%;top:0;border:none' anvil-name='iframe' ></iframe>"
    self.html_panel = HtmlTemplate()
    self.html_panel.html = html
    self.html_panel.dom_nodes["iframe"].srcdoc = srcdoc
    self.add_component(self.html_panel)

What I’ve tried and what’s not working:
I am trying to bypass the server side by simply loading the file to asset and then try to read it directly in the client side as follows:

html_name = anvil.http.request("/_/theme/some_file.html" , method='GET')

I get an error that the app can’t find the file, also I am not sure that this is the same format as the server side trick.
Any help would be great.

2

Meredydd’s solution for the .txt file also works for html files in the assets section.

2 Likes
3

It seems similar but I need the HTML to be in a string format, from what I see in the example and in the docs there is no way to do it, other than using the server side…
Is that correct?

4

Just string the get_bytes content if necessary. html files are really just fancy text files anyways and just contain text content. When verifying the fix works for html too I printed the output to check and it was all proper string in the console.

5

I tried:

file_contents = str(URLMedia(url).get_bytes())

That didn’t work, what am I missing?

6

A byte string must be decoded into a string, something like file_string = file_contents.decode('utf-8')

1 Like
7

Thanks!!!
That solved it all!
Now I wonder how can I put a “Please wait” banner when the app is loading for the first time?
It takes few more seconds to the app to load due to assets loading I assume.

8

You could trigger a notification and set its timeout to 4, or something similar.