Creating a Node.js stream from two piped streams

Question

I\'d like to combine two Node.js streams into one by piping them, if possible. I\'m using Transform streams.

In other words, I\'d like my library to return myS

Answer 1

One option is perhaps to use multipipe which lets you chain multiple transforms together, wrapped as a single transform stream:

// my-stream.js
var multipipe = require('multipipe');

module.exports = function createMyStream() {
  return multipipe(vendorStream, myInternalStream);
};

Then you can do:

var createMyStream = require('./my-stream');

var myStream = createMyStream();

process.stdin.pipe(myStream).pipe(process.stdout);

Clarification: This makes stdin go through vendorStream, then myInternalStream and finally stdout.

Answer 2

You can watch for something to be piped to your stream, and then unpipe it and pipe it to the streams you're interested in:

var PassThrough = require('stream').PassThrough;

var stream3 = new PassThrough();

// When a source stream is piped to us, undo that pipe, and save
// off the source stream piped into our internally managed streams.
stream3.on('pipe', function(source) {
  source.unpipe(this);
  this.transformStream = source.pipe(stream1).pipe(stream2);
});

// When we're piped to another stream, instead pipe our internal
// transform stream to that destination.
stream3.pipe = function(destination, options) {
  return this.transformStream.pipe(destination, options);
};

stdin.pipe(stream3).pipe(stdout);

You can extract this functionality into your own constructable stream class:

var util = require('util');
var PassThrough = require('stream').PassThrough;

var StreamCombiner = function() {
  this.streams = Array.prototype.slice.apply(arguments);

  this.on('pipe', function(source) {
    source.unpipe(this);
    for(i in this.streams) {
      source = source.pipe(this.streams[i]);
    }
    this.transformStream = source;
  });
};

util.inherits(StreamCombiner, PassThrough);

StreamCombiner.prototype.pipe = function(dest, options) {
  return this.transformStream.pipe(dest, options);
};

var stream3 = new StreamCombiner(stream1, stream2);
stdin.pipe(stream3).pipe(stdout);