In this recipe, we will expand on the fs module and demonstrate how to read from a file in PhantomJS. We will cover the open method and discuss the stream object that it returns.
To run this recipe, we will need a script that expects to read a file from the filesystem and a target file from which to read.
The script in this recipe is available in the downloadable code repository as recipe09.js under chapter02. If we run the provided example script, we must change to the root directory for the book's sample code.
Consider the following script:
phantom.onError = function(message, trace) {
console.error('[Something went wrong!] - ' + message);
phantom.exit(1);
};
var fs = require('fs'),
_name = 'reamde.txt',
path = require('system').args[0].split(fs.separator),
file;
path = path.slice(0, path.length - 1).join(fs.separator);
fs.changeWorkingDirectory(path);
file = fs.open(_name, 'r');
console.log('[Reading ' + _name...