read-file-utf8

reads content from file using utf-8 encoding, also imports JSON files easily

Installation

With npm do

npm install read-file-utf8

Usage

read<T = string>(filePath: string): Promise<T>

Read from a text file.

import read from "read-file-utf8";

const filePath = "path/to/file.txt";

try {
  // Read file content.
  const content = await read(filePath)

  console.log(content)
} catch (error) {
  // In case you do not have permissions,
  // you may want to handle it here.
  console.error(error)
}

Examples

Import JSON

This makes sense at the time of this writing (2020) since it is not possibile to import JSON using require when ES modules are enabled in Node.

Update (2023): you can use import assertions like import pkg from "./package.json" assert { type: "json" } but you can a warning:

ExperimentalWarning: Import assertions are not a stable feature of the JavaScript language. Avoid relying on their current behavior and syntax as those might change in a future version of Node.js.

So, to get attributes from a package.json you can do something like the following.

// Read version from package.json file.
// Given the `.json` extension, it is assumed the content is JSON
// and `JSON.parse` is used to parse it.
const { version } = await read("./package.json");

console.log(version)

If you are using TypeScript you may need to provide the type of your JSON.

const { version } = await read<{ version: string }>("./package.json");

Or you may want to double check the input declaring it as unknown and use a type-guard.

const pkg = await read<unknown>("./package.json");

if (isPackageJson(pkg)) console.log(pkg.version);

Read SQL files

Suppose you have some SQL queries. It is really better to put every query in its own queryFile.sql good old SQL file, instead then inside someOtherFile.js JavaScript file.

Create a sql/ folder and put there all your queries. Add also a sql/index.js with the following content

import { join } from "node:path";

export const sql (fileName) =>
  read(path.join(__dirname, `${fileName}.sql`));

Suppose there is a sql/count_winners.sql file with the following content

SELECT COUNT(*) AS num
FROM foo.contest
WHERE is_winner IS TRUE

Now you are able to do, for example

import { Client } from "pg";
import sql from "./path/to/sql.js";

const client = new Client();
await client.connect();

const sqlCode = await sql("count_winners");

const res = await client.query(sqlCode);
console.log(res.rows);

See also

• write-file-utf8

License

MIT