node.js - how to write an array to file

Question

node.js - how to write an array to file

I have a sample array as follows

var arr = [ [ 1373628934214, 3 ],
  [ 1373628934218, 3 ],
  [ 1373628934220, 1 ],
  [ 1373628934230, 1 ],
  [ 1373628934234, 0 ],
  [ 1373628934237, -1 ],
  [ 1373628934242, 0 ],
  [ 1373628934246, -1 ],
  [ 1373628934251, 0 ],
  [ 1373628934266, 11 ] ]

I would like to write this array to a file such as I get a file as follows

1373628934214, 3 
1373628934218, 3
1373628934220, 1
......
......

javascript
node.js

Answer 1

If it's a huuge array and it would take too much memory to serialize it to a string before writing, you can use streams:

var fs = require('fs');

var file = fs.createWriteStream('array.txt');
file.on('error', function(err) { /* error handling */ });
arr.forEach(function(v) { file.write(v.join(', ') + '\n'); });
file.end();

Answer 2

A simple solution is to use writeFile :

require("fs").writeFile(
     somepath,
     arr.map(function(v){ return v.join(', ')).join('\n'),
     function (err) { console.log(err ? 'Error :'+err : 'ok' }
);

Answer 3

Remember you can access good old ECMAScript APIs, in this case, JSON.stringify().

For simple arrays like the one in your example:

require('fs').writeFile(

    './my.json',

    JSON.stringify(myArray),

    function (err) {
        if (err) {
            console.error('Crap happens');
        }
    }
);