file-bin
v0.7.0
Published
An abstraction for accessing the filesystem in Node.js.
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File Bin
File Bin is an exercise in writing an abstraction for file system access in Node.js.
Why does this even exist?
We're doing a project at the Turing School of Software and Design building a note-taking application using Ember and Electron. Ember Data was designed to work with APIs—not the filesystem.
fs.readdir
returns an array of strings. APIs normally return an array of objects.- You have to distinguish between directories and files.
fs.read
doesn't work on directories. - Ember really likes promises and Node really likes callbacks. It would be nice to have an abstraction to bridge that gap.
- We don't want to open weird Vim temp files and stuff like that. It would be cool if we could pass in an array of file extensions that we'd like to return.
How does it work?
Instantiating an Instance
const FileBin = require('file-bin');
let fileBin = new FileBin('/base-directory', ['.md', '.txt']);
The constructor takes two arguments:
- The base directory where we want to look for files.
- Valid extensions.
You can leave either blank. If you do, then it will default to process.cwd()
and allowing all extensions respectively.
Finding a File
Instances have a #find
method that will look for a file with a given file name and return a promise.
fileBin.find('README.md').then(file => {
console.log(file);
});
The resuling file has two properties: id
and content
. id
is the file name. content
is the content of the file.
Finding All of the Files
#all
will find all of the files in the base directory. If you provided an array of valid extensions, then it will filter by those extenions. The resulting files are fulling instantiated objects—just like #find
above.
Note: At this moment, File Bin does not support subdirectories. They are omitted.
fileBin.all().then(files => console.log(files));
Writing a File
#write
takes two arguments fileName
and content
. It will write the file to the filesystem and then return the object via a promise.
fileBin.write('CONTRIBUTORS.md', 'Pull requests accepted')
.then(file => console.log(file));
Copying a File
#copy
takes two arguments sourceFile
and copyFile
. It will write the copied file to the filesystem and then return the copy via a promise.
fileBin.copy('orignal.md', 'original-copy.md')
.then(copy => console.log(copy));
Renaming a file
#rename
takes two arguments oldFileName
and newFileName
. It will rename the old file to the specified new file name and return the file object via a promise.
fileBin.rename('old-name.md', 'new-name.md')
.then((file, oldFileName, newFileName) => console.log(`${oldFileName} was successfully renamed to ${newFileName}.`)
Destroying a file
#destroy
takes a single argument of the fileName
that you want to delete. It will delete the specified file and return the fileName
via a promise.
fileBin.destroy('filename.md')
.then(console.log(`filename.md`))
Copying a File
#copy
takes two arguments sourceFile
and copyFile
. It will write the copied file to the filesystem and then return the copy via a promise.
fileBin.copy('orignal.md', 'original-copy.md')
.then(copy => console.log(copy));
Base Directory Getters and Setters
#getBaseDirectory
can be called on a FileBin instance and it will return the current base directory.
#setBaseDirectory('/new/base')
takes in a directory as an argument and will update the FileBin's base directory to the given directory.
#setBaseDirectory
will emit an event that contains the oldDirectory and the newDirectory.
var fileBin = new FileBin('/some/directory')
console.log(fileBin.getBaseDirectory()); // --> /some/directory;
fileBin.setBaseDirectory('/new/base');
console.log(fileBin.getBaseDirectory()); // --> /new/base;