Using filesystem in node.js with async / await

Question

I would like to use async/await with some filesystem operations. Normally async/await works fine because I use babel-plugin-syntax-async-functions.

But with this code I run into the if case where names is undefined:

import fs from 'fs';

async function myF() {
  let names;
  try {
    names = await fs.readdir('path/to/dir');
  } catch (e) {
    console.log('e', e);
  }
  if (names === undefined) {
    console.log('undefined');
  } else {
    console.log('First Name', names[0]);
  }
}

myF();

When I rebuild the code into the callback hell version everything is OK and I get the filenames. Thanks for your hints.

Answer 1

Starting with node 8.0.0, you can use this:

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

const readdir = util.promisify(fs.readdir);

async function myF() {
  let names;
  try {
    names = await readdir('path/to/dir');
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
  }
  if (names === undefined) {
    console.log('undefined');
  } else {
    console.log('First Name', names[0]);
  }
}

myF();

See https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v8.x/docs/api/util.html#util_util_promisify_original