best way to get folder and file list in Javascript

Question

I\'m using node-webkit, and am trying to have a user select a folder, and I\'ll return the directory structure of that folder and recursively get its children.

I\'v

Answer 1

fs/promises and fs.Dirent

Here's an efficient, non-blocking ls program using Node's fast fs.Dirent objects and fs/promises module. This approach allows you to skip wasteful fs.exist or fs.stat calls on every path -

// main.js
import { readdir } from "fs/promises"
import { join } from "path"

async function* ls (path = ".")
{ yield path
  for (const dirent of await readdir(path, { withFileTypes: true }))
    if (dirent.isDirectory())
      yield* ls(join(path, dirent.name))
    else
      yield join(path, dirent.name)
}

async function* empty () {}

async function toArray (iter = empty())
{ let r = []
  for await (const x of iter)
    r.push(x)
  return r
}

toArray(ls(".")).then(console.log, console.error)

Let's get some sample files so we can see ls working -

$ yarn add immutable     # (just some example package)
$ node main.js

[
  '.',
  'main.js',
  'node_modules',
  'node_modules/.yarn-integrity',
  'node_modules/immutable',
  'node_modules/immutable/LICENSE',
  'node_modules/immutable/README.md',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib/cursor',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib/cursor/README.md',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib/cursor/__tests__',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib/cursor/__tests__/Cursor.ts.skip',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib/cursor/index.d.ts',
  'node_modules/immutable/contrib/cursor/index.js',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist/immutable-nonambient.d.ts',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist/immutable.d.ts',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist/immutable.es.js',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist/immutable.js',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist/immutable.js.flow',
  'node_modules/immutable/dist/immutable.min.js',
  'node_modules/immutable/package.json',
  'package.json',
  'yarn.lock'
]

For added explanation and other ways to leverage async generators, see this Q&A.

Answer 2

Why to invent the wheel?

There is a very popular NPM package, that let you do things like that easy.

var recursive = require("recursive-readdir");

recursive("some/path", function (err, files) {
  // `files` is an array of file paths
  console.log(files);
});

Lear more:

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/recursive-readdir

Answer 3

I don't like adding new package into my project just to handle this simple task.

And also, I try my best to avoid RECURSIVE algorithm.... since, for most cases it is slower compared to non Recursive one.

So I made a function to get all the folder content (and its sub folder).... NON-Recursively

var getDirectoryContent = function(dirPath) {
    /* 
        get list of files and directories from given dirPath and all it's sub directories
        NON RECURSIVE ALGORITHM
        By. Dreamsavior
    */
    var RESULT = {'files':[], 'dirs':[]};

    var fs = fs||require('fs');
    if (Boolean(dirPath) == false) {
        return RESULT;
    }
    if (fs.existsSync(dirPath) == false) {
        console.warn("Path does not exist : ", dirPath);
        return RESULT;
    }

    var directoryList = []
    var DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR = "\\";
    if (dirPath[dirPath.length -1] !== DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) dirPath = dirPath+DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

    directoryList.push(dirPath); // initial

    while (directoryList.length > 0) {
        var thisDir  = directoryList.shift(); 
        if (Boolean(fs.existsSync(thisDir) && fs.lstatSync(thisDir).isDirectory()) == false) continue;

        var thisDirContent = fs.readdirSync(thisDir);
        while (thisDirContent.length > 0) { 
            var thisFile  = thisDirContent.shift(); 
            var objPath = thisDir+thisFile

            if (fs.existsSync(objPath) == false) continue;
            if (fs.lstatSync(objPath).isDirectory()) { // is a directory
                let thisDirPath = objPath+DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR; 
                directoryList.push(thisDirPath);
                RESULT['dirs'].push(thisDirPath);

            } else  { // is a file
                RESULT['files'].push(objPath); 

            } 
        } 

    }
    return RESULT;
}

the only drawback of this function is that this is Synchronous function... You have been warned ;)

Answer 4

In my project I use this function for getting huge amount of files. It's pretty fast (put require("FS") out to make it even faster):

var _getAllFilesFromFolder = function(dir) {

    var filesystem = require("fs");
    var results = [];

    filesystem.readdirSync(dir).forEach(function(file) {

        file = dir+'/'+file;
        var stat = filesystem.statSync(file);

        if (stat && stat.isDirectory()) {
            results = results.concat(_getAllFilesFromFolder(file))
        } else results.push(file);

    });

    return results;

};

usage is clear:

_getAllFilesFromFolder(__dirname + "folder");