How to use the Node.js fs module with async/await

Node.js built-in modules famously are not promise-based.

This is for historical reasons, as those modules were created before promises were a thing.

We’ve had promisify for quite some time, but I recently found out Node.js provides a new API that’s promise-based.

I thought it was new but it’s been introduced in Node.js 10 (2018, it’s been a while!).

At the moment it only works for the fs built-in module.

I’m not sure if this will be ported to other native modules soon.

Here’s how to use it:

import * as fs from 'node:fs/promises';

| Note the node:fs convention which can be now used to identify native modules

Now you can use any of the fs methods using promises or await:

const posts = await fs.readdir('content')