Read a file one line at a time in node.js?

Question

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 to

Answer 1

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);
        });
    }
}