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I have a file which stores many JavaScript objects in JSON form and I need to read the file, create each of the objects, and do something with them (insert them into a db in my case). The JavaScript objects can be represented a format:
Format A:
[{name: 'thing1'},
....
{name: 'thing999999999'}]
or Format B:
{name: 'thing1'} // <== My choice.
...
{name: 'thing999999999'}
Note that the ... indicates a lot of JSON objects. I am aware I could read the entire file into memory and then use JSON.parse() like this:
fs.readFile(filePath, 'utf-8', function (err, fileContents) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(JSON.parse(fileContents));
});
However, the file could be really large, I would prefer to use a stream to accomplish this. The problem I see with a stream is that the file contents could be broken into data chunks at any point, so how can I use JSON.parse() on such objects?
Ideally, each object would be read as a separate data chunk, but I am not sure on how to do that.
var importStream = fs.createReadStream(filePath, {flags: 'r', encoding: 'utf-8'});
importStream.on('data', function(chunk) {
var pleaseBeAJSObject = JSON.parse(chunk);
// insert pleaseBeAJSObject in a database
});
importStream.on('end', function(item) {
console.log("Woot, imported objects into the database!");
});*/
Note, I wish to prevent reading the entire file into memory. Time efficiency does not matter to me. Yes, I could try to read a number of objects at once and insert them all at once, but that's a performance tweak - I need a way that is guaranteed not to cause a memory overload, not matter how many objects are contained in the file.
I can choose to use FormatA or FormatB or maybe something else, just please specify in your answer. Thanks!
To process a file line-by-line, you simply need to decouple the reading of the file and the code that acts upon that input. You can accomplish this by buffering your input until you hit a newline. Assuming we have one JSON object per line (basically, format B):
var stream = fs.createReadStream(filePath, {flags: 'r', encoding: 'utf-8'});
var buf = '';
stream.on('data', function(d) {
buf += d.toString(); // when data is read, stash it in a string buffer
pump(); // then process the buffer
});
function pump() {
var pos;
while ((pos = buf.indexOf('\n')) >= 0) { // keep going while there's a newline somewhere in the buffer
if (pos == 0) { // if there's more than one newline in a row, the buffer will now start with a newline
buf = buf.slice(1); // discard it
continue; // so that the next iteration will start with data
}
processLine(buf.slice(0,pos)); // hand off the line
buf = buf.slice(pos+1); // and slice the processed data off the buffer
}
}
function processLine(line) { // here's where we do something with a line
if (line[line.length-1] == '\r') line=line.substr(0,line.length-1); // discard CR (0x0D)
if (line.length > 0) { // ignore empty lines
var obj = JSON.parse(line); // parse the JSON
console.log(obj); // do something with the data here!
}
}
Each time the file stream receives data from the file system, it's stashed in a buffer, and then pump is called.
If there's no newline in the buffer, pump simply returns without doing anything. More data (and potentially a newline) will be added to the buffer the next time the stream gets data, and then we'll have a complete object.
If there is a newline, pump slices off the buffer from the beginning to the newline and hands it off to process. It then checks again if there's another newline in the buffer (the while loop). In this way, we can process all of the lines that were read in the current chunk.
Finally, process is called once per input line. If present, it strips off the carriage return character (to avoid issues with line endings – LF vs CRLF), and then calls JSON.parse one the line. At this point, you can do whatever you need to with your object.
Note that JSON.parse is strict about what it accepts as input; you must quote your identifiers and string values with double quotes. In other words, {name:'thing1'} will throw an error; you must use {"name":"thing1"}.
Because no more than a chunk of data will ever be in memory at a time, this will be extremely memory efficient. It will also be extremely fast. A quick test showed I processed 10,000 rows in under 15ms.
Just as I was thinking that it would be fun to write a streaming JSON parser, I also thought that maybe I should do a quick search to see if there's one already available.
Turns out there is.
JSONStream "streaming JSON.parse and stringify"
Since I just found it, I've obviously not used it, so I can't comment on its quality, but I'll be interested to hear if it works.
It does work consider the following Javascript and _.isString:
stream.pipe(JSONStream.parse('*'))
.on('data', (d) => {
console.log(typeof d);
console.log("isString: " + _.isString(d))
});
This will log objects as they come in if the stream is an array of objects. Therefore the only thing being buffered is one object at a time.
As of October 2014, you can just do something like the following (using JSONStream) - https://www.npmjs.org/package/JSONStream
var fs = require('fs'),
JSONStream = require('JSONStream'),
var getStream() = function () {
var jsonData = 'myData.json',
stream = fs.createReadStream(jsonData, { encoding: 'utf8' }),
parser = JSONStream.parse('*');
return stream.pipe(parser);
}
getStream().pipe(MyTransformToDoWhateverProcessingAsNeeded).on('error', function (err) {
// handle any errors
});
To demonstrate with a working example:
npm install JSONStream event-stream
data.json:
{
"greeting": "hello world"
}
hello.js:
var fs = require('fs'),
JSONStream = require('JSONStream'),
es = require('event-stream');
var getStream = function () {
var jsonData = 'data.json',
stream = fs.createReadStream(jsonData, { encoding: 'utf8' }),
parser = JSONStream.parse('*');
return stream.pipe(parser);
};
getStream()
.pipe(es.mapSync(function (data) {
console.log(data);
}));
$ node hello.js
// hello world
I had similar requirement, i need to read a large json file in node js and process data in chunks and call a api and save in mongodb.
inputFile.json is like:
{
"customers":[
{ /*customer data*/},
{ /*customer data*/},
{ /*customer data*/}....
]
}
Now i used JsonStream and EventStream to achieve this synchronously.
var JSONStream = require("JSONStream");
var es = require("event-stream");
fileStream = fs.createReadStream(filePath, { encoding: "utf8" });
fileStream.pipe(JSONStream.parse("customers.*")).pipe(
es.through(function(data) {
console.log("printing one customer object read from file ::");
console.log(data);
this.pause();
processOneCustomer(data, this);
return data;
}),
function end() {
console.log("stream reading ended");
this.emit("end");
}
);
function processOneCustomer(data, es) {
DataModel.save(function(err, dataModel) {
es.resume();
});
}
I realize that you want to avoid reading the whole JSON file into memory if possible, however if you have the memory available it may not be a bad idea performance-wise. Using node.js's require() on a json file loads the data into memory really fast.
I ran two tests to see what the performance looked like on printing out an attribute from each feature from a 81MB geojson file.
In the 1st test, I read the entire geojson file into memory using var data = require('./geo.json'). That took 3330 milliseconds and then printing out an attribute from each feature took 804 milliseconds for a grand total of 4134 milliseconds. However, it appeared that node.js was using 411MB of memory.
In the second test, I used #arcseldon's answer with JSONStream + event-stream. I modified the JSONPath query to select only what I needed. This time the memory never went higher than 82MB, however, the whole thing now took 70 seconds to complete!
I wrote a module that can do this, called BFJ. Specifically, the method bfj.match can be used to break up a large stream into discrete chunks of JSON:
const bfj = require('bfj');
const fs = require('fs');
const stream = fs.createReadStream(filePath);
bfj.match(stream, (key, value, depth) => depth === 0, { ndjson: true })
.on('data', object => {
// do whatever you need to do with object
})
.on('dataError', error => {
// a syntax error was found in the JSON
})
.on('error', error => {
// some kind of operational error occurred
})
.on('end', error => {
// finished processing the stream
});
Here, bfj.match returns a readable, object-mode stream that will receive the parsed data items, and is passed 3 arguments:
A readable stream containing the input JSON.
A predicate that indicates which items from the parsed JSON will be pushed to the result stream.
An options object indicating that the input is newline-delimited JSON (this is to process format B from the question, it's not required for format A).
Upon being called, bfj.match will parse JSON from the input stream depth-first, calling the predicate with each value to determine whether or not to push that item to the result stream. The predicate is passed three arguments:
The property key or array index (this will be undefined for top-level items).
The value itself.
The depth of the item in the JSON structure (zero for top-level items).
Of course a more complex predicate can also be used as necessary according to requirements. You can also pass a string or a regular expression instead of a predicate function, if you want to perform simple matches against property keys.
If you have control over the input file, and it's an array of objects, you can solve this more easily. Arrange to output the file with each record on one line, like this:
[
{"key": value},
{"key": value},
...
This is still valid JSON.
Then, use the node.js readline module to process them one line at a time.
var fs = require("fs");
var lineReader = require('readline').createInterface({
input: fs.createReadStream("input.txt")
});
lineReader.on('line', function (line) {
line = line.trim();
if (line.charAt(line.length-1) === ',') {
line = line.substr(0, line.length-1);
}
if (line.charAt(0) === '{') {
processRecord(JSON.parse(line));
}
});
function processRecord(record) {
// Process the records one at a time here!
}
I solved this problem using the split npm module. Pipe your stream into split, and it will "Break up a stream and reassemble it so that each line is a chunk".
Sample code:
var fs = require('fs')
, split = require('split')
;
var stream = fs.createReadStream(filePath, {flags: 'r', encoding: 'utf-8'});
var lineStream = stream.pipe(split());
linestream.on('data', function(chunk) {
var json = JSON.parse(chunk);
// ...
});
Using the #josh3736 answer, but for ES2021 and Node.js 16+ with async/await + AirBnb rules:
import fs from 'node:fs';
const file = 'file.json';
/**
* #callback itemProcessorCb
* #param {object} item The current item
*/
/**
* Process each data chunk in a stream.
*
* #param {import('fs').ReadStream} readable The readable stream
* #param {itemProcessorCb} itemProcessor A function to process each item
*/
async function processChunk(readable, itemProcessor) {
let data = '';
let total = 0;
// eslint-disable-next-line no-restricted-syntax
for await (const chunk of readable) {
// join with last result, remove CR and get lines
const lines = (data + chunk).replace('\r', '').split('\n');
// clear last result
data = '';
// process lines
let line = lines.shift();
const items = [];
while (line) {
// check if isn't a empty line or an array definition
if (line !== '' && !/[\[\]]+/.test(line)) {
try {
// remove the last comma and parse json
const json = JSON.parse(line.replace(/\s?(,)+\s?$/, ''));
items.push(json);
} catch (error) {
// last line gets only a partial line from chunk
// so we add this to join at next loop
data += line;
}
}
// continue
line = lines.shift();
}
total += items.length;
// Process items in parallel
await Promise.all(items.map(itemProcessor));
}
console.log(`${total} items processed.`);
}
// Process each item
async function processItem(item) {
console.log(item);
}
// Init
try {
const readable = fs.createReadStream(file, {
flags: 'r',
encoding: 'utf-8',
});
processChunk(readable, processItem);
} catch (error) {
console.error(error.message);
}
For a JSON like:
[
{ "name": "A", "active": true },
{ "name": "B", "active": false },
...
]
https.get(url1 , function(response) {
var data = "";
response.on('data', function(chunk) {
data += chunk.toString();
})
.on('end', function() {
console.log(data)
});
});
I think you need to use a database. MongoDB is a good choice in this case because it is JSON compatible.
UPDATE:
You can use mongoimport tool to import JSON data into MongoDB.
mongoimport --collection collection --file collection.json
I've been trying to read large binary files that are gzipped from a URL with a node.js program. To simplify the problem, I'm trying to read two unsigned ints from the start of the stream.
It appears that given a large buffer, the following code (incorrectly) returns the same array for a1 and a2 in Node.js, but (correctly) will not return the same array when run from within Chrome against the same URL when called using an XMLHttpRequest:
var bufferPos = 0;
var a1 = new Uint32Array(bData, bufferPos, 1);
bufferPos += 4;
var a2 = new Uint32Array(bData, bufferPos, 1);
Regardless of the content in data, a1 and a2 always appear to be identically long arrays the size of the whole buffer, so I've had to try this which has better results but I then need to convert from an array of values to a Uint32:
var bufferPos = 0;
var a1 = new Uint32Array(bData.slice(bufferPos, (bufferPos+=4)));
var a2 = new Uint32Array(bData.slice(bufferPos, (bufferPos+=4)));
This code is in a callback and the code that builds content and passes the data to bData is in a https.get call that contains this:
//In https.get()
tBuffer = null;
var gunzip = zlib.createGunzip();
resp.pipe(gunzip);
gunzip.on('data', (data) => {
if (tBuffer === null){
tBuffer = data;
} else {
tBuffer = Buffer.concat([tBuffer, data]);
}).on('end', () => {
//callback code in here
callback(tBuffer);
});
Am I handling the response data somehow incorrectly in Node.js that is different from what I would expect in the Chrome XMLHTTPRequest response? The call to gzip was also a pain... am I missing some step there?
Should I not be trying to parse the response content as a buffer in a callback for some reason?
Thanks for the help.
I have a large json file that looks like that:
[
{"name": "item1"},
{"name": "item2"},
{"name": "item3"}
]
I want to stream this file (pretty easy so far), for each line run a asynchronous function (that returns a promise) upon the resolve/reject call edit this line.
The result of the input file could be:
[
{"name": "item1", "response": 200},
{"name": "item2", "response": 404},
{"name": "item3"} // not processed yet
]
I do not wish to create another file, I want to edit on the fly the SAME FILE (if possible!).
Thanks :)
I don't really answer the question, but don't think it can be answered in a satisfactory way anyway, so here are my 2 cents.
I assume that you know how to stream line by line, and run the function, and that the only problem you have is editing the file that you are reading from.
Consequences of inserting
It is not possible to natively insert data into any file (which is what you want to do by changing the JSON live). A file can only grow up at its end.
So inserting 10 bytes of data at the beginning of a 1GB file means that you need to write 1GB to the disk (to move all the data 10 bytes further).
Your filesystem does not understand JSON, and just sees that you are inserting bytes in the middle of a big file so this is going to be very slow.
So, yes it is possible to do.
Write a wrapper over the file API in NodeJS with an insert() method.
Then write some more code to be able to know where to insert bytes into a JSON file without loading the whole file and not producing invalid JSON at the end.
Now I would not recommend it :)
=> Read this question: Is it possible to prepend data to an file without rewriting?
Why do it then?
I assume that want to either
Be able to kill your process at any time, and easily resume work by reading the file again.
Retry partially treated files to fill only the missing bits.
First solution: Use a database
Abstracting the work that needs to be done to live edit files at random places is the sole purpose of existence of databases.
They all exist only to abstract the magic that is behind UPDATE mytable SET name = 'a_longer_name_that_the_name_that_was_there_before' where name = 'short_name'.
Have a look at LevelUP/Down, sqlite, etc...
They will abstract all the magic that needs to be done in your JSON file!
Second solution: Use multiple files
When you stream your file, write two new files!
One that contain current position in the input file and lines that need to be retried
The other one the expected result.
You will also be able to kill your process at any time and restart
According to this answer writing to the same file while reading is not reliable. As a commenter there says, better to write to a temporary file, and then delete the original and rename the temp file over it.
To create a stream of lines you can use byline. Then for each line, apply some operation and pipe it out to the output file.
Something like this:
var fs = require('fs');
var stream = require('stream');
var util = require('util');
var LineStream = require('byline').LineStream;
function Modify(options) {
stream.Transform.call(this, options);
}
util.inherits(Modify, stream.Transform);
Modify.prototype._transform = function(chunk, encoding, done) {
var self = this;
setTimeout(function() {
// your modifications here, note that the exact regex depends on
// your json format and is probably the most brittle part of this
var modifiedChunk = chunk.toString();
if (modifiedChunk.search('response:[^,}]+') === -1) {
modifiedChunk = modifiedChunk
.replace('}', ', response: ' + new Date().getTime() + '}') + '\n';
}
self.push(modifiedChunk);
done();
}, Math.random() * 2000 + 1000); // to simulate an async modification
};
var inPath = './data.json';
var outPath = './out.txt';
fs.createReadStream(inPath)
.pipe(new LineStream())
.pipe(new Modify())
.pipe(fs.createWriteStream(outPath))
.on('close', function() {
// replace input with output
fs.unlink(inPath, function() {
fs.rename(outPath, inPath);
});
});
Note that the above results in only one async operation happening at a time. You could also save the modifications to an array and once all of them are done write the lines from the array to a file, like this:
var fs = require('fs');
var stream = require('stream');
var LineStream = require('byline').LineStream;
var modifiedLines = [];
var modifiedCount = 0;
var inPath = './data.json';
var allModified = new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
fs.createReadStream(inPath).pipe(new LineStream()).on('data', function(chunk) {
modifiedLines.length++;
var index = modifiedLines.length - 1;
setTimeout(function() {
// your modifications here
var modifiedChunk = chunk.toString();
if (modifiedChunk.search('response:[^,}]+') === -1) {
modifiedChunk = modifiedChunk
.replace('}', ', response: ' + new Date().getTime() + '}');
}
modifiedLines[index] = modifiedChunk;
modifiedCount++;
if (modifiedCount === modifiedLines.length) {
resolve();
}
}, Math.random() * 2000 + 1000);
});
}).then(function() {
fs.writeFile(inPath, modifiedLines.join('\n'));
}).catch(function(reason) {
console.error(reason);
});
If instead of lines you wish to stream chunks of valid json which would be a more robust approach, take a look at JSONStream.
As mentioned in the comment, the file you have is not proper JSON, although is valid in Javascript. In order to generate proper JSON, JSON.stringify() could be used. I think it would make life difficult for others to parse nonstandard JSON as well, therefore I would recommend furnishing a new output file instead of keeping the original one.
However, it is still possible to parse the original file as JSON. This is possible via eval('(' + procline + ')');, however it is not secure to take external data into node.js like this.
const fs = require('fs');
const readline = require('readline');
const fr = fs.createReadStream('file1');
const rl = readline.createInterface({
input: fr
});
rl.on('line', function (line) {
if (line.match(new RegExp("\{name"))) {
var procline = "";
if (line.trim().split('').pop() === ','){
procline = line.trim().substring(0,line.trim().length-1);
}
else{
procline = line.trim();
}
var lineObj = eval('(' + procline + ')');
lineObj.response = 200;
console.log(JSON.stringify(lineObj));
}
});
The output would be like this:
{"name":"item1","response":200}
{"name":"item2","response":200}
{"name":"item3","response":200}
Which is line-delimited JSON (LDJSON) and could be useful for streaming stuff, without the need for leading and trailing [, ], or ,. There is an ldjson-stream package for it as well.
I am using a library, ya-csv, that expects either a file or a stream as input, but I have a string.
How do I convert that string into a stream in Node?
As #substack corrected me in #node, the new streams API in Node v10 makes this easier:
const Readable = require('stream').Readable;
const s = new Readable();
s._read = () => {}; // redundant? see update below
s.push('your text here');
s.push(null);
… after which you can freely pipe it or otherwise pass it to your intended consumer.
It's not as clean as the resumer one-liner, but it does avoid the extra dependency.
(Update: in v0.10.26 through v9.2.1 so far, a call to push directly from the REPL prompt will crash with a not implemented exception if you didn't set _read. It won't crash inside a function or a script. If inconsistency makes you nervous, include the noop.)
Do not use Jo Liss's resumer answer. It will work in most cases, but in my case it lost me a good 4 or 5 hours bug finding. There is no need for third party modules to do this.
NEW ANSWER:
var Readable = require('stream').Readable
var s = new Readable()
s.push('beep') // the string you want
s.push(null) // indicates end-of-file basically - the end of the stream
This should be a fully compliant Readable stream. See here for more info on how to use streams properly.
OLD ANSWER:
Just use the native PassThrough stream:
var stream = require("stream")
var a = new stream.PassThrough()
a.write("your string")
a.end()
a.pipe(process.stdout) // piping will work as normal
/*stream.on('data', function(x) {
// using the 'data' event works too
console.log('data '+x)
})*/
/*setTimeout(function() {
// you can even pipe after the scheduler has had time to do other things
a.pipe(process.stdout)
},100)*/
a.on('end', function() {
console.log('ended') // the end event will be called properly
})
Note that the 'close' event is not emitted (which is not required by the stream interfaces).
From node 10.17, stream.Readable have a from method to easily create streams from any iterable (which includes array literals):
const { Readable } = require("stream")
const readable = Readable.from(["input string"])
readable.on("data", (chunk) => {
console.log(chunk) // will be called once with `"input string"`
})
Note that at least between 10.17 and 12.3, a string is itself a iterable, so Readable.from("input string") will work, but emit one event per character. Readable.from(["input string"]) will emit one event per item in the array (in this case, one item).
Also note that in later nodes (probably 12.3, since the documentation says the function was changed then), it is no longer necessary to wrap the string in an array.
https://nodejs.org/api/stream.html#stream_stream_readable_from_iterable_options
Just create a new instance of the stream module and customize it according to your needs:
var Stream = require('stream');
var stream = new Stream();
stream.pipe = function(dest) {
dest.write('your string');
return dest;
};
stream.pipe(process.stdout); // in this case the terminal, change to ya-csv
or
var Stream = require('stream');
var stream = new Stream();
stream.on('data', function(data) {
process.stdout.write(data); // change process.stdout to ya-csv
});
stream.emit('data', 'this is my string');
Edit: Garth's answer is probably better.
My old answer text is preserved below.
To convert a string to a stream, you can use a paused through stream:
through().pause().queue('your string').end()
Example:
var through = require('through')
// Create a paused stream and buffer some data into it:
var stream = through().pause().queue('your string').end()
// Pass stream around:
callback(null, stream)
// Now that a consumer has attached, remember to resume the stream:
stream.resume()
There's a module for that: https://www.npmjs.com/package/string-to-stream
var str = require('string-to-stream')
str('hi there').pipe(process.stdout) // => 'hi there'
Another solution is passing the read function to the constructor of Readable (cf doc stream readeable options)
var s = new Readable({read(size) {
this.push("your string here")
this.push(null)
}});
you can after use s.pipe for exemple
in coffee-script:
class StringStream extends Readable
constructor: (#str) ->
super()
_read: (size) ->
#push #str
#push null
use it:
new StringStream('text here').pipe(stream1).pipe(stream2)
I got tired of having to re-learn this every six months, so I just published an npm module to abstract away the implementation details:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/streamify-string
This is the core of the module:
const Readable = require('stream').Readable;
const util = require('util');
function Streamify(str, options) {
if (! (this instanceof Streamify)) {
return new Streamify(str, options);
}
Readable.call(this, options);
this.str = str;
}
util.inherits(Streamify, Readable);
Streamify.prototype._read = function (size) {
var chunk = this.str.slice(0, size);
if (chunk) {
this.str = this.str.slice(size);
this.push(chunk);
}
else {
this.push(null);
}
};
module.exports = Streamify;
str is the string that must be passed to the constructor upon invokation, and will be outputted by the stream as data. options are the typical options that may be passed to a stream, per the documentation.
According to Travis CI, it should be compatible with most versions of node.
Heres a tidy solution in TypeScript:
import { Readable } from 'stream'
class ReadableString extends Readable {
private sent = false
constructor(
private str: string
) {
super();
}
_read() {
if (!this.sent) {
this.push(Buffer.from(this.str));
this.sent = true
}
else {
this.push(null)
}
}
}
const stringStream = new ReadableString('string to be streamed...')
In a NodeJS, you can create a readable stream in a few ways:
SOLUTION 1
You can do it with fs module. The function fs.createReadStream() allows you to open up a readable stream and all you have to do is pass the path of the file to start streaming in.
const fs = require('fs');
const readable_stream = fs.createReadStream('file_path');
SOLUTION 2
If you don't want to create file, you can create an in-memory stream and do something with it (for example, upload it somewhere). You can do this with stream module. You can import Readable from stream module and you can create a readable stream. When creating an object, you can also implement read() method which is used to read the data out of the internal buffer. If no data available to be read, null is returned. The optional size argument specifies a specific number of bytes to read. If the size argument is not specified, all of the data contained in the internal buffer will be returned.
const Readable = require('stream').Readable;
const readable_stream = new Readable({
read(size) {
// ...
}
});
SOLUTION 3
When you are fetching something over the network, that can be fetched like stream (for example you are fetching a PDF document from some API).
const axios = require('axios');
const readable_stream = await axios({
method: 'get',
url: "pdf_resource_url",
responseType: 'stream'
}).data;
SOLUTION 4
Third party packages can support creating of streams as a feature. That is a way with aws-sdk package that is usually used for uploading files to S3.
const file = await s3.getObject(params).createReadStream();
JavaScript is duck-typed, so if you just copy a readable stream's API, it'll work just fine. In fact, you can probably not implement most of those methods or just leave them as stubs; all you'll need to implement is what the library uses. You can use Node's pre-built EventEmitter class to deal with events, too, so you don't have to implement addListener and such yourself.
Here's how you might implement it in CoffeeScript:
class StringStream extends require('events').EventEmitter
constructor: (#string) -> super()
readable: true
writable: false
setEncoding: -> throw 'not implemented'
pause: -> # nothing to do
resume: -> # nothing to do
destroy: -> # nothing to do
pipe: -> throw 'not implemented'
send: ->
#emit 'data', #string
#emit 'end'
Then you could use it like so:
stream = new StringStream someString
doSomethingWith stream
stream.send()
I am trying to read a large file one line at a time. I found a question on Quora that dealt with the subject but I'm missing some connections to make the whole thing fit together.
var Lazy=require("lazy");
new Lazy(process.stdin)
.lines
.forEach(
function(line) {
console.log(line.toString());
}
);
process.stdin.resume();
The bit that I'd like to figure out is how I might read one line at a time from a file instead of STDIN as in this sample.
I tried:
fs.open('./VeryBigFile.csv', 'r', '0666', Process);
function Process(err, fd) {
if (err) throw err;
// DO lazy read
}
but it's not working. I know that in a pinch I could fall back to using something like PHP, but I would like to figure this out.
I don't think the other answer would work as the file is much larger than the server I'm running it on has memory for.
Since Node.js v0.12 and as of Node.js v4.0.0, there is a stable readline core module. Here's the easiest way to read lines from a file, without any external modules:
const fs = require('fs');
const readline = require('readline');
async function processLineByLine() {
const fileStream = fs.createReadStream('input.txt');
const rl = readline.createInterface({
input: fileStream,
crlfDelay: Infinity
});
// Note: we use the crlfDelay option to recognize all instances of CR LF
// ('\r\n') in input.txt as a single line break.
for await (const line of rl) {
// Each line in input.txt will be successively available here as `line`.
console.log(`Line from file: ${line}`);
}
}
processLineByLine();
Or alternatively:
var lineReader = require('readline').createInterface({
input: require('fs').createReadStream('file.in')
});
lineReader.on('line', function (line) {
console.log('Line from file:', line);
});
The last line is read correctly (as of Node v0.12 or later), even if there is no final \n.
UPDATE: this example has been added to Node's API official documentation.
For such a simple operation there shouldn't be any dependency on third-party modules. Go easy.
var fs = require('fs'),
readline = require('readline');
var rd = readline.createInterface({
input: fs.createReadStream('/path/to/file'),
output: process.stdout,
console: false
});
rd.on('line', function(line) {
console.log(line);
});
Update in 2019
An awesome example is already posted on official Nodejs documentation. here
This requires the latest Nodejs is installed on your machine. >11.4
const fs = require('fs');
const readline = require('readline');
async function processLineByLine() {
const fileStream = fs.createReadStream('input.txt');
const rl = readline.createInterface({
input: fileStream,
crlfDelay: Infinity
});
// Note: we use the crlfDelay option to recognize all instances of CR LF
// ('\r\n') in input.txt as a single line break.
for await (const line of rl) {
// Each line in input.txt will be successively available here as `line`.
console.log(`Line from file: ${line}`);
}
}
processLineByLine();
You don't have to open the file, but instead, you have to create a ReadStream.
fs.createReadStream
Then pass that stream to Lazy
require('fs').readFileSync('file.txt', 'utf-8').split(/\r?\n/).forEach(function(line){
console.log(line);
})
there is a very nice module for reading a file line by line, it's called line-reader
with it you simply just write:
var lineReader = require('line-reader');
lineReader.eachLine('file.txt', function(line, last) {
console.log(line);
// do whatever you want with line...
if(last){
// or check if it's the last one
}
});
you can even iterate the file with a "java-style" interface, if you need more control:
lineReader.open('file.txt', function(reader) {
if (reader.hasNextLine()) {
reader.nextLine(function(line) {
console.log(line);
});
}
});
Old topic, but this works:
var rl = readline.createInterface({
input : fs.createReadStream('/path/file.txt'),
output: process.stdout,
terminal: false
})
rl.on('line',function(line){
console.log(line) //or parse line
})
Simple. No need for an external module.
You can always roll your own line reader. I have'nt benchmarked this snippet yet, but it correctly splits the incoming stream of chunks into lines without the trailing '\n'
var last = "";
process.stdin.on('data', function(chunk) {
var lines, i;
lines = (last+chunk).split("\n");
for(i = 0; i < lines.length - 1; i++) {
console.log("line: " + lines[i]);
}
last = lines[i];
});
process.stdin.on('end', function() {
console.log("line: " + last);
});
process.stdin.resume();
I did come up with this when working on a quick log parsing script that needed to accumulate data during the log parsing and I felt that it would nice to try doing this using js and node instead of using perl or bash.
Anyway, I do feel that small nodejs scripts should be self contained and not rely on third party modules so after reading all the answers to this question, each using various modules to handle line parsing, a 13 SLOC native nodejs solution might be of interest .
With the carrier module:
var carrier = require('carrier');
process.stdin.resume();
carrier.carry(process.stdin, function(line) {
console.log('got one line: ' + line);
});
I ended up with a massive, massive memory leak using Lazy to read line by line when trying to then process those lines and write them to another stream due to the way drain/pause/resume in node works (see: http://elegantcode.com/2011/04/06/taking-baby-steps-with-node-js-pumping-data-between-streams/ (i love this guy btw)). I haven't looked closely enough at Lazy to understand exactly why, but I couldn't pause my read stream to allow for a drain without Lazy exiting.
I wrote the code to process massive csv files into xml docs, you can see the code here: https://github.com/j03m/node-csv2xml
If you run the previous revisions with Lazy line it leaks. The latest revision doesn't leak at all and you can probably use it as the basis for a reader/processor. Though I have some custom stuff in there.
Edit: I guess I should also note that my code with Lazy worked fine until I found myself writing large enough xml fragments that drain/pause/resume because a necessity. For smaller chunks it was fine.
In most cases this should be enough:
const fs = require("fs")
fs.readFile('./file', 'utf-8', (err, file) => {
const lines = file.split('\n')
for (let line of lines)
console.log(line)
});
Edit:
Use a transform stream.
With a BufferedReader you can read lines.
new BufferedReader ("lorem ipsum", { encoding: "utf8" })
.on ("error", function (error){
console.log ("error: " + error);
})
.on ("line", function (line){
console.log ("line: " + line);
})
.on ("end", function (){
console.log ("EOF");
})
.read ();
I was frustrated by the lack of a comprehensive solution for this, so I put together my own attempt (git / npm). Copy-pasted list of features:
Interactive line processing (callback-based, no loading the entire file into RAM)
Optionally, return all lines in an array (detailed or raw mode)
Interactively interrupt streaming, or perform map/filter like processing
Detect any newline convention (PC/Mac/Linux)
Correct eof / last line treatment
Correct handling of multi-byte UTF-8 characters
Retrieve byte offset and byte length information on per-line basis
Random access, using line-based or byte-based offsets
Automatically map line-offset information, to speed up random access
Zero dependencies
Tests
NIH? You decide :-)
Since posting my original answer, I found that split is a very easy to use node module for line reading in a file; Which also accepts optional parameters.
var split = require('split');
fs.createReadStream(file)
.pipe(split())
.on('data', function (line) {
//each chunk now is a seperate line!
});
Haven't tested on very large files. Let us know if you do.
function createLineReader(fileName){
var EM = require("events").EventEmitter
var ev = new EM()
var stream = require("fs").createReadStream(fileName)
var remainder = null;
stream.on("data",function(data){
if(remainder != null){//append newly received data chunk
var tmp = new Buffer(remainder.length+data.length)
remainder.copy(tmp)
data.copy(tmp,remainder.length)
data = tmp;
}
var start = 0;
for(var i=0; i<data.length; i++){
if(data[i] == 10){ //\n new line
var line = data.slice(start,i)
ev.emit("line", line)
start = i+1;
}
}
if(start<data.length){
remainder = data.slice(start);
}else{
remainder = null;
}
})
stream.on("end",function(){
if(null!=remainder) ev.emit("line",remainder)
})
return ev
}
//---------main---------------
fileName = process.argv[2]
lineReader = createLineReader(fileName)
lineReader.on("line",function(line){
console.log(line.toString())
//console.log("++++++++++++++++++++")
})
I wanted to tackle this same problem, basically what in Perl would be:
while (<>) {
process_line($_);
}
My use case was just a standalone script, not a server, so synchronous was fine. These were my criteria:
The minimal synchronous code that could reuse in many projects.
No limits on file size or number of lines.
No limits on length of lines.
Able to handle full Unicode in UTF-8, including characters beyond the BMP.
Able to handle *nix and Windows line endings (old-style Mac not needed for me).
Line endings character(s) to be included in lines.
Able to handle last line with or without end-of-line characters.
Not use any external libraries not included in the node.js distribution.
This is a project for me to get a feel for low-level scripting type code in node.js and decide how viable it is as a replacement for other scripting languages like Perl.
After a surprising amount of effort and a couple of false starts this is the code I came up with. It's pretty fast but less trivial than I would've expected: (fork it on GitHub)
var fs = require('fs'),
StringDecoder = require('string_decoder').StringDecoder,
util = require('util');
function lineByLine(fd) {
var blob = '';
var blobStart = 0;
var blobEnd = 0;
var decoder = new StringDecoder('utf8');
var CHUNK_SIZE = 16384;
var chunk = new Buffer(CHUNK_SIZE);
var eolPos = -1;
var lastChunk = false;
var moreLines = true;
var readMore = true;
// each line
while (moreLines) {
readMore = true;
// append more chunks from the file onto the end of our blob of text until we have an EOL or EOF
while (readMore) {
// do we have a whole line? (with LF)
eolPos = blob.indexOf('\n', blobStart);
if (eolPos !== -1) {
blobEnd = eolPos;
readMore = false;
// do we have the last line? (no LF)
} else if (lastChunk) {
blobEnd = blob.length;
readMore = false;
// otherwise read more
} else {
var bytesRead = fs.readSync(fd, chunk, 0, CHUNK_SIZE, null);
lastChunk = bytesRead !== CHUNK_SIZE;
blob += decoder.write(chunk.slice(0, bytesRead));
}
}
if (blobStart < blob.length) {
processLine(blob.substring(blobStart, blobEnd + 1));
blobStart = blobEnd + 1;
if (blobStart >= CHUNK_SIZE) {
// blobStart is in characters, CHUNK_SIZE is in octets
var freeable = blobStart / CHUNK_SIZE;
// keep blob from growing indefinitely, not as deterministic as I'd like
blob = blob.substring(CHUNK_SIZE);
blobStart -= CHUNK_SIZE;
blobEnd -= CHUNK_SIZE;
}
} else {
moreLines = false;
}
}
}
It could probably be cleaned up further, it was the result of trial and error.
Generator based line reader: https://github.com/neurosnap/gen-readlines
var fs = require('fs');
var readlines = require('gen-readlines');
fs.open('./file.txt', 'r', function(err, fd) {
if (err) throw err;
fs.fstat(fd, function(err, stats) {
if (err) throw err;
for (var line of readlines(fd, stats.size)) {
console.log(line.toString());
}
});
});
A new function was added in Node.js v18.11.0 to read files line by line
filehandle.readLines([options])
This is how you use this with a text file you want to read
import { open } from 'node:fs/promises';
myFileReader();
async function myFileReader() {
const file = await open('./TextFileName.txt');
for await (const line of file.readLines()) {
console.log(line)
}
}
To understand more read Node.js documentation here is the link for file system readlines():
https://nodejs.org/api/fs.html#filehandlereadlinesoptions
If you want to read a file line by line and writing this in another:
var fs = require('fs');
var readline = require('readline');
var Stream = require('stream');
function readFileLineByLine(inputFile, outputFile) {
var instream = fs.createReadStream(inputFile);
var outstream = new Stream();
outstream.readable = true;
outstream.writable = true;
var rl = readline.createInterface({
input: instream,
output: outstream,
terminal: false
});
rl.on('line', function (line) {
fs.appendFileSync(outputFile, line + '\n');
});
};
var fs = require('fs');
function readfile(name,online,onend,encoding) {
var bufsize = 1024;
var buffer = new Buffer(bufsize);
var bufread = 0;
var fd = fs.openSync(name,'r');
var position = 0;
var eof = false;
var data = "";
var lines = 0;
encoding = encoding || "utf8";
function readbuf() {
bufread = fs.readSync(fd,buffer,0,bufsize,position);
position += bufread;
eof = bufread ? false : true;
data += buffer.toString(encoding,0,bufread);
}
function getLine() {
var nl = data.indexOf("\r"), hasnl = nl !== -1;
if (!hasnl && eof) return fs.closeSync(fd), online(data,++lines), onend(lines);
if (!hasnl && !eof) readbuf(), nl = data.indexOf("\r"), hasnl = nl !== -1;
if (!hasnl) return process.nextTick(getLine);
var line = data.substr(0,nl);
data = data.substr(nl+1);
if (data[0] === "\n") data = data.substr(1);
online(line,++lines);
process.nextTick(getLine);
}
getLine();
}
I had the same problem and came up with above solution
looks simular to others but is aSync and can read large files very quickly
Hopes this helps
Two questions we must ask ourselves while doing such operations are:
What's the amount of memory used to perform it?
Is the memory consumption increasing drastically with the file size?
Solutions like require('fs').readFileSync() loads the whole file into memory. That means that the amount of memory required to perform operations will be almost equivalent to the file size. We should avoid these for anything larger than 50mbs
We can easily track the amount of memory used by a function by placing these lines of code after the function invocation :
const used = process.memoryUsage().heapUsed / 1024 / 1024;
console.log(
`The script uses approximately ${Math.round(used * 100) / 100} MB`
);
Right now the best way to read particular lines from a large file is using node's readline. The documentation has amazing examples.
This is my favorite way of going through a file, a simple native solution for a progressive (as in not a "slurp" or all-in-memory way) file read with modern async/await. It's a solution that I find "natural" when processing large text files without having to resort to the readline package or any non-core dependency.
let buf = '';
for await ( const chunk of fs.createReadStream('myfile') ) {
const lines = buf.concat(chunk).split(/\r?\n/);
buf = lines.pop() ?? '';
for( const line of lines ) {
console.log(line);
}
}
if(buf.length) console.log(buf); // last line, if file does not end with newline
You can adjust encoding in the fs.createReadStream or use chunk.toString(<arg>). Also this let's you better fine-tune the line splitting to your taste, ie. use .split(/\n+/) to skip empty lines and control the chunk size with fs.createReadStream('myfile', { highWaterMark: <chunkSize> }).
Don't forget to create a function like processLine(line) to avoid repeating the line processing code twice due to the ending buf leftover. Unfortunately, the ReadStream instance does not update its end-of-file flags in this setup, so there's no way, afaik, to detect within the loop that we're in the last iteration without some more verbose tricks like comparing the file size from a fs.Stats() with .bytesRead. Hence the final buf processing solution, unless you're absolutely sure your file ends with a newline \n, in which case the for await loop should suffice.
Performance Considerations
Chunk sizes are important for performance, the default is 64k for text files and, for multi MB files, larger chunks can improve speed by an order of magnitude.
The above snippet runs at least the same speed (or even 5% faster sometimes) as code based on NodeJS v18's fs.readLine() or based on the readline module (the accepted answer), once you tune highWaterMark to something that your machine can handle, ie. setting it to the same size as the file, if your available memory allows it, is the fastest.
In any case, any of NodeJS line-reading answers here are an order of magnitude slower than the Perl or native *Nix solutions.
Similar alternatives
★ If you prefer the evented asynchronous version, this would be it:
let buf = '';
fs.createReadStream('myfile')
.on('data', chunk => {
const lines = buf.concat(chunk).split(/\r?\n/);
buf = lines.pop();
for( const line of lines ) {
console.log(line);
}
})
.on('end', () => buf.length && console.log(buf) );
★ Now if you don't mind importing the stream core package, then this is the equivalent piped stream version, which allows for chaining transforms like gzip decompression:
const { Writable } = require('stream');
let buf = '';
fs.createReadStream('myfile').pipe(
new Writable({
write: (chunk, enc, next) => {
const lines = buf.concat(chunk).split(/\r?\n/);
buf = lines.pop();
for (const line of lines) {
console.log(line);
}
next();
}
})
).on('finish', () => buf.length && console.log(buf) );
I have a little module which does this well and is used by quite a few other projects npm readline Note thay in node v10 there is a native readline module so I republished my module as linebyline https://www.npmjs.com/package/linebyline
if you dont want to use the module the function is very simple:
var fs = require('fs'),
EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter,
util = require('util'),
newlines = [
13, // \r
10 // \n
];
var readLine = module.exports = function(file, opts) {
if (!(this instanceof readLine)) return new readLine(file);
EventEmitter.call(this);
opts = opts || {};
var self = this,
line = [],
lineCount = 0,
emit = function(line, count) {
self.emit('line', new Buffer(line).toString(), count);
};
this.input = fs.createReadStream(file);
this.input.on('open', function(fd) {
self.emit('open', fd);
})
.on('data', function(data) {
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
if (0 <= newlines.indexOf(data[i])) { // Newline char was found.
lineCount++;
if (line.length) emit(line, lineCount);
line = []; // Empty buffer.
} else {
line.push(data[i]); // Buffer new line data.
}
}
}).on('error', function(err) {
self.emit('error', err);
}).on('end', function() {
// Emit last line if anything left over since EOF won't trigger it.
if (line.length){
lineCount++;
emit(line, lineCount);
}
self.emit('end');
}).on('close', function() {
self.emit('close');
});
};
util.inherits(readLine, EventEmitter);
Another solution is to run logic via sequential executor nsynjs. It reads file line-by-line using node readline module, and it doesn't use promises or recursion, therefore not going to fail on large files. Here is how the code will looks like:
var nsynjs = require('nsynjs');
var textFile = require('./wrappers/nodeReadline').textFile; // this file is part of nsynjs
function process(textFile) {
var fh = new textFile();
fh.open('path/to/file');
var s;
while (typeof(s = fh.readLine(nsynjsCtx).data) != 'undefined')
console.log(s);
fh.close();
}
var ctx = nsynjs.run(process,{},textFile,function () {
console.log('done');
});
Code above is based on this exampe: https://github.com/amaksr/nsynjs/blob/master/examples/node-readline/index.js
i use this:
function emitLines(stream, re){
re = re && /\n/;
var buffer = '';
stream.on('data', stream_data);
stream.on('end', stream_end);
function stream_data(data){
buffer += data;
flush();
}//stream_data
function stream_end(){
if(buffer) stream.emmit('line', buffer);
}//stream_end
function flush(){
var re = /\n/;
var match;
while(match = re.exec(buffer)){
var index = match.index + match[0].length;
stream.emit('line', buffer.substring(0, index));
buffer = buffer.substring(index);
re.lastIndex = 0;
}
}//flush
}//emitLines
use this function on a stream and listen to the line events that is will emit.
gr-
While you should probably use the readline module as the top answer suggests, readline appears to be oriented toward command line interfaces rather than line reading. It's also a little bit more opaque regarding buffering. (Anyone who needs a streaming line oriented reader probably will want to tweak buffer sizes). The readline module is ~1000 lines while this, with stats and tests, is 34.
const EventEmitter = require('events').EventEmitter;
class LineReader extends EventEmitter{
constructor(f, delim='\n'){
super();
this.totalChars = 0;
this.totalLines = 0;
this.leftover = '';
f.on('data', (chunk)=>{
this.totalChars += chunk.length;
let lines = chunk.split(delim);
if (lines.length === 1){
this.leftover += chunk;
return;
}
lines[0] = this.leftover + lines[0];
this.leftover = lines[lines.length-1];
if (this.leftover) lines.pop();
this.totalLines += lines.length;
for (let l of lines) this.onLine(l);
});
// f.on('error', ()=>{});
f.on('end', ()=>{console.log('chars', this.totalChars, 'lines', this.totalLines)});
}
onLine(l){
this.emit('line', l);
}
}
//Command line test
const f = require('fs').createReadStream(process.argv[2], 'utf8');
const delim = process.argv[3];
const lineReader = new LineReader(f, delim);
lineReader.on('line', (line)=> console.log(line));
Here's an even shorter version, without the stats, at 19 lines:
class LineReader extends require('events').EventEmitter{
constructor(f, delim='\n'){
super();
this.leftover = '';
f.on('data', (chunk)=>{
let lines = chunk.split(delim);
if (lines.length === 1){
this.leftover += chunk;
return;
}
lines[0] = this.leftover + lines[0];
this.leftover = lines[lines.length-1];
if (this.leftover)
lines.pop();
for (let l of lines)
this.emit('line', l);
});
}
}
const fs = require("fs")
fs.readFile('./file', 'utf-8', (err, data) => {
var innerContent;
console.log("Asynchronous read: " + data.toString());
const lines = data.toString().split('\n')
for (let line of lines)
innerContent += line + '<br>';
});
I wrap the whole logic of daily line processing as a npm module: line-kit
https://www.npmjs.com/package/line-kit
// example
var count = 0
require('line-kit')(require('fs').createReadStream('/etc/issue'),
(line) => { count++; },
() => {console.log(`seen ${count} lines`)})
I use below code the read lines after verify that its not a directory and its not included in the list of files need not to be check.
(function () {
var fs = require('fs');
var glob = require('glob-fs')();
var path = require('path');
var result = 0;
var exclude = ['LICENSE',
path.join('e2e', 'util', 'db-ca', 'someother-file'),
path.join('src', 'favicon.ico')];
var files = [];
files = glob.readdirSync('**');
var allFiles = [];
var patternString = [
'trade',
'order',
'market',
'securities'
];
files.map((file) => {
try {
if (!fs.lstatSync(file).isDirectory() && exclude.indexOf(file) === -1) {
fs.readFileSync(file).toString().split(/\r?\n/).forEach(function(line){
patternString.map((pattern) => {
if (line.indexOf(pattern) !== -1) {
console.log(file + ' contain `' + pattern + '` in in line "' + line +'";');
result = 1;
}
});
});
}
} catch (e) {
console.log('Error:', e.stack);
}
});
process.exit(result);
})();
I have looked through all above answers, all of them use third-party library to solve it. It's have a simple solution in Node's API. e.g
const fs= require('fs')
let stream = fs.createReadStream('<filename>', { autoClose: true })
stream.on('data', chunk => {
let row = chunk.toString('ascii')
}))