node.js fs.readdir recursive directory search

Question

Any ideas on an async directory search using fs.readdir? I realise that we could introduce recursion and call the read directory function with the next directory to read, bu

Answer 1

Using async/await, this should work:

const FS = require('fs');
const readDir = promisify(FS.readdir);
const fileStat = promisify(FS.stat);

async function getFiles(dir) {
    let files = await readDir(dir);

    let result = files.map(file => {
        let path = Path.join(dir,file);
        return fileStat(path).then(stat => stat.isDirectory() ? getFiles(path) : path);
    });

    return flatten(await Promise.all(result));
}

function flatten(arr) {
    return Array.prototype.concat(...arr);
}

You can use bluebird.Promisify or this:

/**
 * Returns a function that will wrap the given `nodeFunction`. Instead of taking a callback, the returned function will return a promise whose fate is decided by the callback behavior of the given node function. The node function should conform to node.js convention of accepting a callback as last argument and calling that callback with error as the first argument and success value on the second argument.
 *
 * @param {Function} nodeFunction
 * @returns {Function}
 */
module.exports = function promisify(nodeFunction) {
    return function(...args) {
        return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
            nodeFunction.call(this, ...args, (err, data) => {
                if(err) {
                    reject(err);
                } else {
                    resolve(data);
                }
            })
        });
    };
};

Node 8+ has Promisify built-in

See my other answer for a generator approach that can give results even faster.