Interacting with the File System
Before Node.js, JavaScript was predominantly used in the browser. Node.js brought JavaScript to the server and enabled us to interact with the operating system through JavaScript. Today, Node.js is one of the most popular technologies for building server-side applications.
Node.js interacts with the operating system at a fundamental level: input and output (I/O). This chapter will explore the core APIs provided by Node.js that allow us to interact with standard I/O, the file system, and the network stack.
This chapter will show you how to read and write files both synchronously and asynchronously. Node.js was built to handle asynchronous code and enable a non-blocking model. Understanding how to read and write asynchronous code is fundamental learning, and it will show how to leverage the capabilities of Node.js.
We will also learn about the core modules provided by Node.js. We’ll be focusing on the File System module, which enables you to interact with the file system and files. Newer versions of Node.js have added Promise variants of many file system APIs, which will also be touched upon in this chapter.
This chapter will cover the following recipes:
- Interacting with the file system
- Working with files
- Fetching metadata
- Watching files
