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Recursively read a directories with a folder

I’ve been trying to request a recursively read a directory with fs module. I had problems along the way, its only giving me a file name. Here’s how I need it to be:

  • File name.
  • And also a directory of that file. This results may be as an object or bulked into an array.

Anyone please help. Thanks.

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Answer

Here is a recursive solution. You can test it, save it in a file, run node yourfile.js /the/path/to/traverse.

const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');
const util = require('util');

const traverse = function(dir, result = []) {
    
    // list files in directory and loop through
    fs.readdirSync(dir).forEach((file) => {
        
        // builds full path of file
        const fPath = path.resolve(dir, file);
        
        // prepare stats obj
        const fileStats = { file, path: fPath };

        // is the file a directory ? 
        // if yes, traverse it also, if no just add it to the result
        if (fs.statSync(fPath).isDirectory()) {
            fileStats.type = 'dir';
            fileStats.files = [];
            result.push(fileStats);
            return traverse(fPath, fileStats.files)
        }

        fileStats.type = 'file';
        result.push(fileStats);
    });
    return result;
};

console.log(util.inspect(traverse(process.argv[2]), false, null));

Output looks like this :

[
  {
    file: 'index.js',
    path: '/stackoverflow/test-class/index.js',
    type: 'file'
  },
  {
    file: 'message.js',
    path: '/stackoverflow/test-class/message.js',
    type: 'file'
  },
  {
    file: 'somefolder',
    path: '/stackoverflow/test-class/somefolder',
    type: 'dir',
    files: [{
      file: 'somefile.js',
      path: '/stackoverflow/test-class/somefolder/somefile.js',
      type: 'file'
    }]
  },
  {
    file: 'test',
    path: '/stackoverflow/test-class/test',
    type: 'file'
  },
  {
    file: 'test.c',
    path: '/stackoverflow/test-class/test.c',
    type: 'file'
  }
]
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