child-process-tools

Helper functions to spawn and manage child processes, especially for writing shell utilities with Javascript / Typescript

Usage

child_process = require('child_process')
tools = require('child-process-toolbox')
const child = child_process.spawn('bash',['-c','echo answer 42'])
// channel child process's stderr & stdout to the current process's stderr & stdout, so that 
// the spawned child process's output can be seen on console
tools.echoChildProcessOutput(child);
// wait for a pattern to be outputed from the child process's outputs (stderr & stdout)
const line = await tools.promiseOutputPattern(child, 'answer 24')
const line2 = await tools.promiseOutputPattern(child, /answer [0-9]{2}/)
const codeOrSignal = await tools.promiseKilled(child)

See unit test cases in "*.spec.ts" for example usages.

echoChildProcessOutput

This function watches the outputs from the child process and forward the outputs to the current process's outputs, so that the outputs of the child process can be observed from console. Useful for writing scripts that calls child_process.spawn() & wants the output be seen.

function echoChildProcessOutput(
  childProcess: child_process.ChildProcess, // child process returned from child_process.spawn()
  options: {
    parentProcess?: NodeJS.Process; // default the global 'process'
    outPrefix?: string; // prefix string before each line of output from stdout
    errPrefix?: string; // prefix string before each line from stderr
    echoStdout?: boolean; // default true
    echoStderr?: boolean; // default true
  } = {}
)

promiseOutputPattern

Returns a Promise that resolves when a line of output from child process matches the given pattern. This is useful when starts a service using child_process.spawn(), and wish to wait until a line of output indicating the service is ready (like listening on an address, etc.)

If the process exits or encounter an error before the expected output, the returned Promise will reject.

The resolved value is the line of output that matches the pattern.

/**
 * Return a Promise that resolves to a string (line of output) when a pattern to be outputed from the process's stdout or stderr
 * @param process
 * @param pattern - string or RegExp to match against the output
 * @param options - (optional) options
 *      - watchStdout
 *      - watchStderr
 *      - timeoutInMs - time in ms after which the Promise will be rejected
 *      - killProcessIfTimeout - when timeout, whether or not to kill the process before rejection
 */

promiseKilled

Kill the process and return a promise that resolves the string killSignal (normally 'SIGTERM') or a numerical code (unlikely, unless the process exists normally before get killed) on the process's "exit" event.

On "error" event of the process, the promise will be rejected.

Parameters: process: the child process to kill (like one returned from child_process.spawn) killSignal: optional, the signal to kill the child process, by default SIGTERM

export async function promiseKilled(
  process: ChildProcess,
  signal?: number | NodeJS.Signals
): Promise<number | NodeJS.Signals> 

Usage example:

const child = child_process.spawn('bash', [
  '-c',
  'echo THE answer is...;sleep 1000000000000000;echo 42'
]);
const signal = await promiseKilled(child);