Not works fs.readFile in node js

Question

I have:

 fs.readFile('../services/Prescipcion.xml', "utf8", function (err, data) {
    console.log("err->", err);
    console.log("data", data);
 });

And it logs:

err-> { 
  [Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '../services/Prescipcion.xml']
  errno: -2,
  code: 'ENOENT',
  syscall: 'open',
  path: '../services/Prescipcion.xml' 
}

I don't understand why this happens.

Do you have the file in that location? If you are *NIX, then try `ls ../services/Prescipcion.xml` — thefourtheye, Oct 26 '15 at 10:10

score 66 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '15 at 10:19

The error message says no such file or directory, so at first sight this most likely means the path to the file is incorrect.

Either the filename is incorrect (typo?) or the directory is incorrectly resolved. Take note that a relative path will be resolved against process.cwd():

process.cwd(): Returns the current working directory of the process.

You can try using console.log(process.cwd()) to help you debug the issue.

If the file Prescipcion.xml should be retrieved locally from where the script is run, you can also use the following construct:

fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, '../services') + '/Prescipcion.xml', 'utf8');

__dirname: The name of the directory that the currently executing script resides in.

`Take note that a relative path will be resolved against process.cwd()` was very helpful. — Martin Cup, Mar 01 '17 at 01:30

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 29 '18 at 15:06

It worked for me

  var fs = require("fs");

    const readFIle = path => {
      fs.readFile(__dirname + path, "utf8", (err, data) => {
        if (err) {
          console.log(err.stack);
          return;
        }
        console.log(data.toString());
      });
      console.log("Program Ended");
    };

usage:

readFIle("/input.txt");

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 18 '17 at 02:29

A full example that worked for me, based on other answer

var fs = require('fs');
var path = require('path');
var readStream = fs.createReadStream(path.join(__dirname, '../rooms') + '/rooms.txt', 'utf8');
let data = ''
readStream.on('data', function(chunk) {
    data += chunk;
}).on('end', function() {
    console.log(data);
});

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 09 '18 at 21:37

When passing data over from a Web App to an Express server, the fs root resides under the Web App directory and NOT the server's root directory. Therefore, the first writeFile parameter must point to a directory outside the server directory, or link over to the server file tree.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 11 '19 at 09:04

you can use relative or absolute path as fs.readFile argument , but the point is that i got stumped with this was:

if you have let path = 'c:\a\b\c.d and you want to use it as an arg for fs.readFile(path, {'utf-8'}, (err, content) => {//...your stuffs}) you should take care that \ is an escape character in js, so fs read your path as c:abc.d then it will use this path as a relative path so fs will search for C:\Users\dir_to_your_project\c:abc.d which is obviously not a valid path and it results in a Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory... error

so how to fix this issue?

it's very simple you should just replace \ with \\ in your desired path before using it as an arg in fs.readFile():

new_path_for_fsReadFileArg = path.replace(/\\/g,"\\\\");

Not works fs.readFile in node js

5 Answers5

Linked