Reading a file in Javascript in Node

Question

I'm simply trying to read a text file in Node. I'm not in the DOM.

I can write to a file with this package but I'm having trouble reading from it .

I know i neead the following:

var fs = require('fs');
var readStream = fs.createReadStream('my_file.txt');

But the readStream is a complex object. I just want the variable as a string. Any ideas?

Answer 1

If it's a file, why wouldn't you use fs.readFile, which was intended for reading files

fs.readFile('my_file.txt', {encoding : 'utf8'}, function (err, data) {
 if (err) throw err;
 var fileContent = data;
});

There's even a synchronous version available, which you generally shouldn't be using

var fileContent = fs.readFileSync('my_file.txt', {encoding : 'utf8'});

• ctt: It should be noted that if you plan on reading several files at the same time (e.g. in response to a request), you may get better leverage using fs.createReadStream(...) and processing the file using the streaming API. Although more convenient, fs.readFile() will buffer the entire file in memory.