tmpgen

Create unique nested temporary directories. Makes factories according to a path spec with wildcards. Each wildcard gets replaced with a generated name, by monotonic-timestamp (the default), hat or a custom generator. If this results in an existing path, the generator is called again, and if that doesn't work, tmpgen starts concatenating names. Has utilities to remove the created directories, but does not delete anything by default.

concrete example

const levelup = require('levelup')
    , tmp = require('tmpgen')('my-awesome-module/*')

const db1 = levelup(tmp())
    , db2 = levelup(tmp())

usage

The basic premise: create a factory with tmpgen(spec), then call the factory to create a unique directory and get its path. Only the last wildcard in a spec is made to be unique each time.

const tmpgen = require('tmpgen')

// Create a factory, using the default generator
const tmp = tmpgen('a/*/b-*')

// /tmp/a/1453821919917/b-1453821919918
console.log(tmp())

// /tmp/a/1453821919917/b-1453821919921
console.log(tmp())

// Create a sub-factory, using node-hat as generator.
const sub = tmp.sub('beep-*', { gen: 'hat' })

// /tmp/a/1453821919917/b-1453821919923/beep-eae732..
console.log(sub())

// /tmp/a/1453821919917/b-1453821919923/beep-881ce2..
console.log(sub())

// Recursively delete every directory created by `sub`
sub.del()

// Create another directory
const p1 = sub()

// Append (and create) an extra path
const p2 = sub('even/deeper')

// Delete specific directories
sub.del(p1)
sub.del(p2)

// Throws, because `sub` did not create this path or an ancestor
sub.del('/home')

// Delete every directory created by `tmp` and `sub`
tmp.del()

api

factory = tmpgen([spec][, opts])

• spec: must be a relative path. Defaults to "[module-name]/*". If spec does not contain wildcards, and the path it resolves to already exists, the factory will throw an error.
• opts.gen: "timestamp" or "ts", "hat" or "random" or a function to be called without any arguments. These are equal:

tmpgen({ gen: 'ts' })
tmpgen({ gen: require('monotonic-timestamp') })

• opts.root: where to mount directories. Defaults to osenv.tmpdir()
• opts.clean: call factory.del() on process exit, if the exit code is zero or opts.always is true. Essentially:

// opts.clean
process.on('exit', (code) => code || tmp.del())

// opts.clean && opts.always
process.on('exit', () => tmp.del())

path = factory(...extra)

Create a new directory. Any extra arguments are appended to the generated path and resolved. Throws if the resolved path is not inside the generated path:

factory('foo/..', 'bar', '..')

factory = factory.sub(spec[, opts])

Create a sub-factory, inheriting the options from its parent. Unless you specify opts.root, the sub will call its parent (once) to generate a root path. For sub-factories, spec is required.

factory.del([path])

Recursively and synchronously delete a path. Throws if path (or an ancestor) was not created by the factory. If path is omitted, all previously created directories are deleted. Note that in the following example, the complete /tmp/a will be deleted if it did not exist before.

const tmp = tmpgen('a/b/c/*')
const path = tmp()

tmp.del()

If you use a custom root, it will be created for you, but never deleted. In this example, /home/beep/tmp-a and /home/beep/tmp-aa are deleted at the end, but not /home/beep.

const gen = () => 'a'
const tmp = tmpgen('tmp-*', { gen, root: '/home/beep' })
const path1 = tmp()
const path2 = tmp()

tmp.del()

install

With npm do:

npm install tmpgen

license

MIT © Vincent Weevers