node-sync-ipc

node-sync-ipc is a tiny library making it possible for node processes to send synchronous message to other processes. It can block the client side process until the server make a response.

Install

 
npm install node-sync-ipc
 

Usage

Server side:

 
// server.js
 
const SyncIPCServer = require("node-sync-ipc").SyncIPCServer;
 
// pipe File
// on Unix based systems, pipe file should be a sock file path
// on Windows, pipe should be named pipes
// const pipeFile = "\\\\.\\pipe\\somePipeName"; // <- windows
const pipeFile = path.join(require('os').tmpDir(), 'tmp.sock');
 
const server = new SyncIPCServer(pipeFile);
 
server.startListen();
 
server.onMessage("foo",function(res,bar){
    bar = bar + " " +bar;
    // block the child process for one second
    setTimeout(function(){
        // the first argument will be passed to child process as the result
        res(bar);
    },1000)
});
 
//stop server when not needed
//server.stop()
 

Client Side:

 
// client.js
 
const SyncIPCClient = require("node-sync-ipc").SyncIPCClient;
 
// pipe File to connect to
const serverHandle = path.join(require('os').tmpDir(), 'tmp.sock');
 
const client = new SyncIPCClient(serverHandle);
 
// will log "echo content echo content" in console
 
console.log(client.sendSync("foo","echo content"));
 

Attention

Data should be serializable

Data to be transferred will be serialized and deserialized in the format of JSON. Error will be thrown if data is not serializable by JSON.stringify.

Also class information will be lost during the communication.

Electron && NW.js

This module has c++ add-ons, so you have to rebuild it to use it in Electron.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2018 Hang Ma. See LICENSE for details.