How to read file with async/await properly?

Question

I cannot figure out how async/await works. I slightly understands it but I can\'t make it work.

Answer 1

There is a fs.readFileSync( path, options ) method, which is synchronous.

Answer 2

Since Node v11.0.0 fs promises are available natively without promisify:

const fs = require('fs').promises;
async function loadMonoCounter() {
    const data = await fs.readFile("monolitic.txt", "binary");
    return new Buffer(data);
}

Answer 3

To keep it succint and retain all functionality of fs:

const fs = require('fs');
const fsPromises = fs.promises;

async function loadMonoCounter() {
    const data = await fsPromises.readFile('monolitic.txt', 'binary');
    return new Buffer(data);
}

Importing fs and fs.promises separately will give access to the entire fs API while also keeping it more readable... So that something like the next example is easily accomplished.

// the 'next example'
fsPromises.access('monolitic.txt', fs.constants.R_OK | fs.constants.W_OK)
    .then(() => console.log('can access'))
    .catch(() => console.error('cannot access'));

Answer 4

To use await/async you need methods that return promises. The core API functions don't do that without wrappers like promisify:

const fs = require('fs');
const util = require('util');

// Convert fs.readFile into Promise version of same    
const readFile = util.promisify(fs.readFile);

function getStuff() {
  return readFile('test');
}

// Can't use `await` outside of an async function so you need to chain
// with then()
getStuff().then(data => {
  console.log(data);
})

As a note, readFileSync does not take a callback, it returns the data or throws an exception. You're not getting the value you want because that function you supply is ignored and you're not capturing the actual return value.

Answer 5

This is TypeScript version of @Joel's answer. It is usable after Node 11.0:

import { promises as fs } from 'fs';

async function loadMonoCounter() {
    const data = await fs.readFile('monolitic.txt', 'binary');
    return Buffer.from(data);
}

Answer 6

You can easily wrap the readFile command with a promise like so:

async function readFile(path) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      fs.readFile(path, 'utf8', function (err, data) {
        if (err) {
          reject(err);
        }
        resolve(data);
      });
    });
  }

then use:

await readFile("path/to/file");