fs-remote

fs-remote is a drop-in replacement for Node.js's fs module, designed for web browsers. It delegates all fs calls to a node server. tl;dr it lets you use a real fs module in the browser.

Usage

• In node, create and run an fs-remote server:

const createServer = require("fs-remote/createServer");
 
// createServer returns a net.Server
const server = createServer();
 
server.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log("fs-remote server is listening on port 3000");
});

• In the browser, load fs-remote's createClient function:

  • If you are using webpack or browserify, you can use require:

  const createClient = require("fs-remote/createClient");

  • Otherwise, you can use a script tag and find createClient on the global fsRemote varaible:

  <script src="https://unpkg.com/fs-remote@0.1.9/dist/umd.js"></script>

  const createClient = fsRemote.createClient;

• In the browser, use createClient to create an fs object pointing to your fs-remote server:

// Pass in the URL to the server you created
const fs = createClient("http://localhost:3000");

• Use the fs object normally:

console.log(fs.readFileSync("./package.json"));

How it works

All the methods on the fs object returned by createClient use XHRs and/or WebSockets to communicate with the server and run the fs code matching what you ran on the client on the server. Synchronous XHRs are used when necessary to make synchronous fs operations work.

Supported APIs

• fs.access
• fs.accessSync
• fs.appendFile
• fs.appendFileSync
• fs.chmod
• fs.chmodSync
• fs.chown
• fs.chownSync
• fs.close
• fs.closeSync
• fs.constants
• fs.copyFile
• fs.copyFileSync
• fs.createReadStream
• fs.createWriteStream
• fs.exists
• fs.existsSync
• fs.fchmod
• fs.fchmodSync
• fs.fchown
• fs.fchownSync
• fs.fdatasync
• fs.fdatasyncSync
• fs.fstat
• fs.fstatSync
• fs.fsync
• fs.fsyncSync
• fs.ftruncate
• fs.ftruncateSync
• fs.futimes
• fs.futimesSync
• fs.lchmod
• fs.lchmodSync
• fs.lchown
• fs.lchownSync
• fs.link
• fs.linkSync
• fs.lstat
• fs.lstatSync
• fs.mkdir
• fs.mkdirSync
• fs.mkdtemp
• fs.mkdtempSync
• fs.open
• fs.openSync
• fs.read
• fs.readFile
• fs.readFileSync
• fs.readSync
• fs.readdir
• fs.readdirSync
• fs.readlink
• fs.readlinkSync
• fs.realpath
• fs.realpathSync
• fs.rename
• fs.renameSync
• fs.rmdir
• fs.rmdirSync
• fs.stat
• fs.statSync
• fs.symlink
• fs.symlinkSync
• fs.truncate
• fs.truncateSync
• fs.unlink
• fs.unlinkSync
• fs.unwatchFile
• fs.utimes
• fs.utimesSync
• fs.watch
• fs.watchFile
• fs.write
• fs.writeFile
• fs.writeFileSync
• fs.writeSync
• fs.FSWatcher
• fs.Stats

Notes

The server supports CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) by default. To disable CORS, pass { cors: false } when constructing the server:

const createServer = require("fs-remote/createServer");
 
// createServer returns a net.Server
const server = createServer({ cors: false });

Examples

Check the examples folder for examples.

License

MIT