When the data is available in a plain text file (tabs or comma-delimited) you can load it into the grid without any server-side processing at all.
The file may look like this:
The first step is to create an external data model object, which will load the data and provide a necessary interface for the grid to access it.
var table = new Active.Text.Table;
The data model should know the URL of the file.
table.setProperty("URL", "companies.txt");
And you should ask the model to start loading the file.
table.request();
After the grid object is created
var obj = new Active.Controls.Grid; obj.setProperty("column/count", 5);
it is assigned our new external data model.
obj.setModel("data", table);
Don't forget to write the grid HTML to the page as usual.
document.write(obj);
Full script: