Node file system access with promises

The functions in Node’s fs package allow asynchronous file system reads and data manipulation. Once the file system operation is complete fs calls a callback to handle the results (e.g. the contents of a file or an error message). Using promises instead of callbacks allows for cleaner code and handling a dynamic number of file system operations.

Getting promise-supporting IO functions using promise-io

As the functions in fs don’t return promise objects we need to generate functions that do.

Promised-IO contains a conversion function and also a copy of the fs package with all functions already generated with promise support.

To install it run npm install promised-io --save and then load it in your code like so:

var promisedFs = require('promised-io/fs')

Using the promise version of fs

Now we can call promisedFs.writeFile and it will return a promise with a then function that we can pass our callback to:

promisedFs.writeFile('test.txt').then(function(){
	console.log('Done writing.')
});

Combining multiple file system operations

The main advantage of promises over simple callbacks is that the number of operations can be dynamic. For example if we have an array with files that we want to create the code for 1 file and 100 files is the same:

var filesToCreate = ['one.txt', 'two.txt', 'three.txt'],
	Promise = require("promised-io/promise"),
	promisedFs = require('promised-io/fs');

var promises = filesToCreate.map(function(fileName, i){
	return promisedFs.writeFile(fileName, i);
});

Promise.all(promises).then(function(){
	console.log('We can use the files now.');
});

The Promise variable contains the all function that can be passed an array of promises and will call then when all promises have been resolved.

Also note that we’re using map instead of forEach, allowing us to avoid first creating an array to hold the promises and then pushing them on the array individually.