Execute a command line binary with Node.js

Question

I am in the process of porting a CLI library from Ruby over to Node.js. In my code I execute several third party binaries when necessary. I am not sure how best to accomplis

Answer 1

@hexacyanide's answer is almost a complete one. On Windows command prince could be prince.exe, prince.cmd, prince.bat or just prince (I'm no aware of how gems are bundled, but npm bins come with a sh script and a batch script - npm and npm.cmd). If you want to write a portable script that would run on Unix and Windows, you have to spawn the right executable.

Here is a simple yet portable spawn function:

function spawn(cmd, args, opt) {
    var isWindows = /win/.test(process.platform);

    if ( isWindows ) {
        if ( !args ) args = [];
        args.unshift(cmd);
        args.unshift('/c');
        cmd = process.env.comspec;
    }

    return child_process.spawn(cmd, args, opt);
}

var cmd = spawn("prince", ["-v", "builds/pdf/book.html", "-o", "builds/pdf/book.pdf"])

// Use these props to get execution results:
// cmd.stdin;
// cmd.stdout;
// cmd.stderr;