Filesystem I/O

Asynchronously Read from Files

Use the filesystem module for all file operations:

const fs = require('fs');

With Encoding

In this example, read hello.txt from the directory /tmp. This operation will be completed in the background and the callback occurs on completion or failure:

fs.readFile('/tmp/hello.txt', { encoding: 'utf8' }, (err, content) => {
  // If an error occurred, output it and return
  if(err) return console.error(err);

  // No error occurred, content is a string
  console.log(content);
});

Without Encoding

Read the binary file binary.txt from the current directory, asynchronously in the background. Note that we do not set the ‘encoding’ option - this prevents Node.js from decoding the contents into a string:

fs.readFile('binary', (err, binaryContent) => {
  // If an error occurred, output it and return
  if(err) return console.error(err);

  // No error occurred, content is a Buffer, output it in
  // hexadecimal representation.
  console.log(content.toString('hex'));
});

Relative paths

Keep in mind that, in general case, your script could be run with an arbitrary current working directory. To address a file relative to the current script, use __dirname or __filename:

fs.readFile(path.resolve(__dirname, 'someFile'), (err, binaryContent) => {
  //Rest of Function
}

Listing Directory Contents with readdir or readdirSync

const fs = require('fs');

// Read the contents of the directory /usr/local/bin asynchronously.
// The callback will be invoked once the operation has either completed
// or failed.
fs.readdir('/usr/local/bin', (err, files) => {
  // On error, show it and return
  if(err) return console.error(err);

  // files is an array containing the names of all entries
  // in the directory, excluding '.' (the directory itself)
  // and '..' (the parent directory).

  // Display directory entries
  console.log(files.join(' '));
});

A synchronous variant is available as readdirSync which blocks the main thread and therefore prevents execution of asynchronous code at the same time. Most developers avoid synchronous IO functions in order to improve performance.

let files;

try {
  files = fs.readdirSync('/var/tmp');
} catch(err) {
  // An error occurred
  console.error(err);
}

Using a generator

const fs = require('fs');

// Iterate through all items obtained via
// 'yield' statements
// A callback is passed to the generator function because it is required by
// the 'readdir' method
function run(gen) {
  var iter = gen((err, data) => {
    if (err) { iter.throw(err); }

    return iter.next(data);
  });

  iter.next();
}

const dirPath = '/usr/local/bin';

// Execute the generator function
run(function* (resume) {
  // Emit the list of files in the directory from the generator
  var contents = yield fs.readdir(dirPath, resume);
  console.log(contents);
});

Reading from a file synchronously

For any file operations, you will need the filesystem module:

const fs = require('fs');

Reading a String

fs.readFileSync behaves similarly to fs.readFile, but does not take a callback as it completes synchronously and therefore blocks the main thread. Most node.js developers prefer the asynchronous variants which will cause virtually no delay in the program execution.

If an encoding option is specified, a string will be returned, otherwise a Buffer will be returned.

// Read a string from another file synchronously
let content;
try {
  content = fs.readFileSync('sync.txt', { encoding: 'utf8' });
} catch(err) {
  // An error occurred
  console.error(err);
}

Copying files by piping streams

This program copies a file using readable and a writable stream with the pipe() function provided by the stream class

// require the file system module
var fs = require('fs');

/*
    Create readable stream to file in current directory named 'node.txt'
    Use utf8 encoding
    Read the data in 16-kilobyte chunks
*/
var readable = fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/node.txt', { encoding: 'utf8', highWaterMark: 16 * 1024 });

// create writable stream
var writable = fs.createWriteStream(__dirname + '/nodePipe.txt');

// use pipe to copy readable to writable
readable.pipe(writable);

Check Permissions of a File or Directory

fs.access() determines whether a path exists and what permissions a user has to the file or directory at that path. fs.access doesn’t return a result rather, if it doesn’t return an error, the path exists and the user has the desired permissions.

The permission modes are available as a property on the fs object, fs.constants

• fs.constants.F_OK - Has read/write/execute permissions (If no mode is provided, this is the default)
• fs.constants.R_OK - Has read permissions
• fs.constants.W_OK - Has write permissions
• fs.constants.X_OK - Has execute permissions (Works the same as fs.constants.F_OK on Windows)

Asynchronously

var fs = require('fs');
var path = '/path/to/check';

// checks execute permission
fs.access(path, fs.constants.X_OK, (err) => {
    if (err) {
        console.log("%s doesn't exist", path);
    } else {
        console.log('can execute %s', path);
    }
});
// Check if we have read/write permissions
// When specifying multiple permission modes
// each mode is separated by a pipe : `|`
fs.access(path, fs.constants.R_OK | fs.constants.W_OK, (err) => {
    if (err) {
        console.log("%s doesn't exist", path);
    } else {
        console.log('can read/write %s', path);
    }
});

Synchronously

fs.access also has a synchronous version fs.accessSync. When using fs.accessSync you must enclose it within a try/catch block.

// Check write permission
try {
    fs.accessSync(path, fs.constants.W_OK);
    console.log('can write %s', path);
}
catch (err) {
    console.log("%s doesn't exist", path);
}

Checking if a file or a directory exists

Asynchronously

var fs = require('fs');

fs.stat('path/to/file', function(err) {
    if (!err) {
        console.log('file or directory exists');
    }
    else if (err.code === 'ENOENT') {
        console.log('file or directory does not exist');
    }
});

Synchronously

here, we must wrap the function call in a try/catch block to handle error.

var fs = require('fs');

try {
    fs.statSync('path/to/file');
    console.log('file or directory exists');
}
catch (err) {
  if (err.code === 'ENOENT') {
    console.log('file or directory does not exist');
  }
}

Determining the line count of a text file

app.js

const readline = require('readline');
const fs = require('fs');

var file = 'path.to.file';
var linesCount = 0;
var rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: fs.createReadStream(file),
    output: process.stdout,
    terminal: false
});
rl.on('line', function (line) {
    linesCount++; // on each linebreak, add +1 to 'linesCount'
});
rl.on('close', function () {
    console.log(linesCount); // print the result when the 'close' event is called
});

Usage:

node app

Reading a file line by line

app.js

const readline = require('readline');
const fs = require('fs');

var file = 'path.to.file';
var rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: fs.createReadStream(file),
    output: process.stdout,
    terminal: false
});

rl.on('line', function (line) {
    console.log(line) // print the content of the line on each linebreak
});

Usage:

node app

Writing to a file using writeFile or writeFileSync

var fs = require('fs');

// Save the string "Hello world!" in a file called "hello.txt" in
// the directory "/tmp" using the default encoding (utf8).
// This operation will be completed in background and the callback
// will be called when it is either done or failed.
fs.writeFile('/tmp/hello.txt', 'Hello world!', function(err) {
  // If an error occurred, show it and return
  if(err) return console.error(err);
  // Successfully wrote to the file!
});

// Save binary data to a file called "binary.txt" in the current
// directory. Again, the operation will be completed in background.
var buffer = new Buffer([ 0x48, 0x65, 0x6c, 0x6c, 0x6f ]);
fs.writeFile('binary.txt', buffer, function(err) {
  // If an error occurred, show it and return
  if(err) return console.error(err);
  // Successfully wrote binary contents to the file!
});

fs.writeFileSync behaves similarly to fs.writeFile, but does not take a callback as it completes synchronously and therefore blocks the main thread. Most node.js developers prefer the asynchronous variants which will cause virtually no delay in the program execution.

Note: Blocking the main thread is bad practice in node.js. Synchronous function should only be used when debugging or when no other options are availables.

// Write a string to another file and set the file mode to 0755
try {
  fs.writeFileSync('sync.txt', 'anni', { mode: 0o755 });
} catch(err) {
  // An error occurred
  console.error(err);
}

Deleting a file using unlink or unlinkSync

Delete a file asynchronously:

var fs = require('fs');

fs.unlink('/path/to/file.txt', function(err) {
  if (err) throw err;

  console.log('file deleted');
});

You can also delete it synchronously*:

var fs = require('fs');

fs.unlinkSync('/path/to/file.txt');
console.log('file deleted');

• avoid synchronous methods because they block the entire process until the execution finishes.

Reading a file into a Buffer using streams

While reading content from a file is already asynchronous using the fs.readFile() method, sometimes we want to get the data in a Stream versus in a simple callback. This allows us to pipe this data to other locations or to process it as it comes in versus all at once at the end.

const fs = require('fs');

// Store file data chunks in this array
let chunks = [];
// We can use this variable to store the final data
let fileBuffer;

// Read file into stream.Readable
let fileStream = fs.createReadStream('text.txt');

// An error occurred with the stream
fileStream.once('error', (err) => {
    // Be sure to handle this properly!
    console.error(err);
});

// File is done being read
fileStream.once('end', () => {
    // create the final data Buffer from data chunks;
    fileBuffer = Buffer.concat(chunks);

    // Of course, you can do anything else you need to here, like emit an event!
});

// Data is flushed from fileStream in chunks,
// this callback will be executed for each chunk
fileStream.on('data', (chunk) => {
    chunks.push(chunk); // push data chunk to array

    // We can perform actions on the partial data we have so far!
});

Avoiding race conditions when creating or using an existing directory

Due to Node’s asynchronous nature, creating or using a directory by first:

1. checking for its existence with fs.stat(), then
2. creating or using it depending of the results of the existence check,

can lead to a race condition if the folder is created between the time of the check and the time of the creation. The method below wraps fs.mkdir() and fs.mkdirSync() in error-catching wrappers that let the exception pass if its code is EEXIST (already exists). If the error is something else, like EPERM (pemission denied), throw or pass an error like the native functions do.

Asynchronous version with fs.mkdir()

Synchronous version with fs.mkdirSync()

Cloning a file using streams

This program illustrates how one can copy a file using readable and writable streams using the createReadStream(), and createWriteStream() functions provided by the file system module.

//Require the file System module
var fs = require('fs');

/*
  Create readable stream to file in current directory (__dirname) named 'node.txt'
  Use utf8 encoding
  Read the data in 16-kilobyte chunks
*/
var readable = fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/node.txt', { encoding: 'utf8', highWaterMark: 16 * 1024 });

// create writable stream
var writable = fs.createWriteStream(__dirname + '/nodeCopy.txt');

// Write each chunk of data to the writable stream
readable.on('data', function(chunk) {
    writable.write(chunk);
});

Changing contents of a text file

Example. It will be replacing the word email to a name in a text file index.txt with simple RegExp replace(/email/gim, 'name')

var fs = require('fs');

fs.readFile('index.txt', 'utf-8', function(err, data) {
    if (err) throw err;

    var newValue = data.replace(/email/gim, 'name');

    fs.writeFile('index.txt', newValue, 'utf-8', function(err, data) {
        if (err) throw err;
        console.log('Done!');
    })
})

Remarks

In Node.js, resource intensive operations such as I/O are performed asynchronously, but have a synchronous counterpart (e.g. there exists a fs.readFile and its counterpart is fs.readFileSync). Since Node is single-threaded, you should be careful when using synchronous operations, because they will block the entire process.

If a process is blocked by a synchronous operation, the entire execution cycle (including the event loop) is halted. That means other asynchronous code, including events and event handlers, will not run and your program will continue to wait until the single blocking operation has completed.

There are appropriate uses for both synchronous and asynchronous operations, but care must be taken that they are utilized properly.