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Return File Data With A Custom Function

I am building my own project (website) and I am trying to create a renderTemplate function to return HTML files but I don’t how to return data from the file

Here is quick example of what I am doing

var file = require("fs")

const render = () => {
    file.readFile(`file.txt`, {encoding: "utf-8"}, (err, data) => {
        if (err) throw err
        return data
    })
}

console.log(render())

I made sure the file.txt exists, ran the code and got undefined in the output

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Answer

Because render doesn not return anything, and it can’t return anything since you are using the asynchronous callback based version of readFile.

Or you use the sync version:

const fs = require("fs")

const render = () => fs.readFileSync(`file.txt`, {encoding: "utf-8"})

console.log( render() )

Or you use promise based async version that is better if you have multiple readings:

const fs = require("fs")

const render = () => fs.readFileAsync(`file.txt`, {encoding: "utf-8"})

render().then( data => console.log(data) )
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