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FileReader: readAsDataURL() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The readAsDataURL() method of the FileReader interface is used to read the contents of the specified Blob or File. When the read operation is finished, the readyState property becomes DONE, and the loadend event is triggered. At that time, the result attribute contains the data as a data: URL representing the file's data as a base64 encoded string.

Note: The blob's result cannot be directly decoded as Base64 without first removing the Data-URL declaration preceding the Base64-encoded data. To retrieve only the Base64 encoded string, first remove data:*/*;base64, from the result.

Syntax

readAsDataURL(blob)

Parameters

blob

The Blob or File from which to read.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

>

Reading a single file

HTML

<input type="file" /><br />
<img src="" height="200" alt="Image preview" />

JavaScript

const preview = document.querySelector("img");
const fileInput = document.querySelector("input[type=file]");

fileInput.addEventListener("change", previewFile);

function previewFile() {
  const file = fileInput.files[0];
  const reader = new FileReader();

  reader.addEventListener(
    "load",
    () => {
      // convert image file to base64 string
      preview.src = reader.result;
    },
    false,
  );

  if (file) {
    reader.readAsDataURL(file);
  }
}

Result

Reading multiple files

HTML

<input id="browse" type="file" multiple />
<div id="preview"></div>

JavaScript

function previewFiles() {
  const preview = document.querySelector("#preview");
  const files = document.querySelector("input[type=file]").files;

  function readAndPreview(file) {
    // Make sure `file.name` matches our extensions criteria
    if (/\.(?:jpe?g|png|gif)$/i.test(file.name)) {
      const reader = new FileReader();

      reader.addEventListener(
        "load",
        () => {
          const image = new Image();
          image.height = 100;
          image.title = file.name;
          image.src = reader.result;
          preview.appendChild(image);
        },
        false,
      );

      reader.readAsDataURL(file);
    }
  }

  if (files) {
    Array.prototype.forEach.call(files, readAndPreview);
  }
}

const picker = document.querySelector("#browse");
picker.addEventListener("change", previewFiles);

Result

Specifications

Specification
File API>
# readAsDataURL>

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Opera Safari Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet WebView Android WebView on iOS
readAsDataURL 6 12 3.6 11 6 18
32Using the camera in Android 8.x raises an exception. See bug 1511083.
 11 6 1.0 3 6

See also

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Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileReader/readAsDataURL