Tmp
A simple temporary file and directory creator for node.js.
About
This is a widely used library to create temporary files and directories in a node.js environment.
Tmp offers both an asynchronous and a synchronous API. For all API calls, all the parameters are optional. There also exists a promisified version of the API, see (5) under references below.
Tmp uses crypto for determining random file names, or, when using templates, a six letter random identifier. And just in case that you do not have that much entropy left on your system, Tmp will fall back to pseudo random numbers.
You can set whether you want to remove the temporary file on process exit or not, and the destination directory can also be set.
How to install
Usage
Please also check API docs.
Asynchronous file creation
Simple temporary file creation, the file will be closed and unlinked on process exit.
Synchronous file creation
A synchronous version of the above.
Note that this might throw an exception if either the maximum limit of retries for creating a temporary name fails, or, in case that you do not have the permission to write to the directory where the temporary file should be created in.
Asynchronous directory creation
Simple temporary directory creation, it will be removed on process exit.
If the directory still contains items on process exit, then it won't be removed.
If you want to cleanup the directory even when there are entries in it, then you can pass the unsafeCleanup
option when creating it.
Synchronous directory creation
A synchronous version of the above.
Note that this might throw an exception if either the maximum limit of retries for creating a temporary name fails, or, in case that you do not have the permission to write to the directory where the temporary directory should be created in.
Asynchronous filename generation
It is possible with this library to generate a unique filename in the specified directory.
Synchronous filename generation
A synchronous version of the above.
Advanced usage
Asynchronous file creation
Creates a file with mode 0644
, prefix will be prefix-
and postfix will be .txt
.
Synchronous file creation
A synchronous version of the above.
Controlling the Descriptor
As a side effect of creating a unique file tmp
gets a file descriptor that is returned to the user as the fd
parameter. The descriptor may be used by the application and is closed when the removeCallback
is invoked.
In some use cases the application does not need the descriptor, needs to close it without removing the file, or needs to remove the file without closing the descriptor. Two options control how the descriptor is managed:
discardDescriptor
- iftrue
causestmp
to close the descriptor after the file is created. In this case thefd
parameter is undefined.detachDescriptor
- iftrue
causestmp
to return the descriptor in thefd
parameter, but it is the application's responsibility to close it when it is no longer needed.
Asynchronous directory creation
Creates a directory with mode 0755
, prefix will be myTmpDir_
.
Synchronous directory creation
Again, a synchronous version of the above.
mkstemp like, asynchronously
Creates a new temporary directory with mode 0700
and filename like /tmp/tmp-nk2J1u
.
mkstemp like, synchronously
This will behave similarly to the asynchronous version.
Asynchronous filename generation
The tmpName()
function accepts the prefix
, postfix
, dir
, etc. parameters also:
Synchronous filename generation
The tmpNameSync()
function works similarly to tmpName()
.
Graceful cleanup
One may want to cleanup the temporary files even when an uncaught exception occurs. To enforce this, you can call the setGracefulCleanup()
method:
Options
All options are optional :)
mode
: the file mode to create with, it fallbacks to0600
on file creation and0700
on directory creationprefix
: the optional prefix, fallbacks totmp-
if not providedpostfix
: the optional postfix, fallbacks to.tmp
on file creationtemplate
:mkstemp
like filename template, no defaultdir
: the optional temporary directory, fallbacks to system default (guesses from environment)tries
: how many times should the function try to get a unique filename before giving up, default3
keep
: signals that the temporary file or directory should not be deleted on exit, default isfalse
, means deletePlease keep in mind that it is recommended in this case to call the provided
cleanupCallback
function manually.
unsafeCleanup
: recursively removes the created temporary directory, even when it's not empty. default isfalse
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