You can listen for a click on an item and based on that trigger an ajax call for the appropriate file. Load the contents of that file into your content div within the success callback.
Happy to walk you through sample code live over here: https://sudonow.com/session/525cb34035e089113700000a
Pasting the content of the code editor here:
<body>
<ul>
<li id="item1" class="item"><a href="#">item1</li>
<li id="item3" class="item"><a href="#">item2</li>
<li id="item4" class="item"><a href="#">item3</li>
<li id="item5" class="item"><a href="#">item4</li>
</ul>
<div id="content">
<!-- when a link is clicked write some html from external file to this spot-->
</div>
</body>
</html>
//JS
//convert some file content to html
var genHtmlContent = function(content){
//do something here depending on how data is stored e.g. we could just return an html string from some keyvalue json
return content.htmlContent;
}
//Use javascript to detect a click on a list item and grab the appropriate content
$("item").click(function(event){
var selectedId = event.target.id;
var url = "http://www.mysite.com/" + selectedId + ".json";
$.get(url, function(content) {
var htmlContent = genHtmlContent(content);
$("#content").val(htmlContent);
})
})
//sample json file on server
//item1.json
{htmlContent: "<div>I am Item 1</div>"}