Reading files with Node

Aug 21, 2018

Learn how to read files in Node.js with the fs module, using the asynchronous readFile() and synchronous readFileSync(), and why streams suit big files.

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The simplest way to read a file in Node is to use the fs.readFile() method, passing it the file path and a callback function that will be called with the file data (and the error):

const fs = require('fs')

fs.readFile('/Users/flavio/test.txt', (err, data) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err)
    return
  }
  console.log(data)
})

Alternatively, you can use the synchronous version fs.readFileSync():

const fs = require('fs')

try {
  const data = fs.readFileSync('/Users/flavio/test.txt', 'utf8')
  console.log(data)
} catch (err) {
  console.error(err)
}

The default encoding is utf8, but you can specify a custom encoding using a a second parameter.

Both fs.readFile() and fs.readFileSync() read the full content of the file in memory before returning the data.

This means that big files are going to have a major impact on your memory consumption and speed of execution of the program.

In this case, a better option is to read the file content using streams.

Tagged: Node.js · All topics

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