.. | ||
lib | ||
LICENSE | ||
package.json | ||
README.md |
Tail
The zero dependency Node.js module for tailing a file
Author: Luca Grulla - www.lucagrulla.com
Installation
npm install tail
Use
Tail = require('tail').Tail;
tail = new Tail("fileToTail");
tail.on("line", function(data) {
console.log(data);
});
tail.on("error", function(error) {
console.log('ERROR: ', error);
});
If you want to stop tail:
tail.unwatch()
To start watching again:
tail.watch()
Configuration
The only mandatory parameter is the path to the file to tail.
var fileToTail = "/path/to/fileToTail.txt";
new Tail(fileToTail)
If the file is missing or invalid Tail
constructor will throw an Exception and won't initialize.
try {
new Tail('missingFile.txt')
} catch ex {
console.log(ex)
}
Optional parameters can be passed via a hash:
var options= {separator: /[\r]{0,1}\n/, fromBeginning: false, fsWatchOptions: {}, follow: true, logger: console}
new Tail(fileToTail, options)
Constructor parameters
separator
: the line separator token (default:/[\r]{0,1}\n/
to handle linux/mac (9+)/windows). Pass null if your file is binary there's no line separator.fsWatchOptions
: the full set of options that can be passed tofs.watch
as per node documentation (default: {}).fromBeginning
: forces the tail of the file from the very beginning of it instead of from the first new line that will be appended (default:false
).follow
: simulatetail -F
option. In the case the file is moved/renamed (or logrotated), if set totrue
tail
will try to start tailing again after a 1 second delay, if set tofalse
it will just emit an error event (default:true
).logger
: a logger object(default: no logger). The passed logger has to respond to two methods:info([data][, ...])
error([data][, ...])
useWatchFile
: if set totrue
will force the use offs.watchFile
rather than delegating to the library the choice betweenfs.watch
andfs.watchFile
(default:false
).encoding
: the encoding of the file to tail (default:utf-8
).flushAtEOF
: set totrue
if you want to force flush of content when end of file is reached. Particularly useful when there's no separator character at the end of the file (default:false
).
Emitted events
Tail
emits two events:
- line
tail.on('line', (data) => {
console.log(data)
})
- error
tail.on('error', (err) => {
console.log(err)
})
How to contribute
Tail is written in CoffeeScript.
The Cakefile generates the javascript that is then published to npm.
History
Tail was born as part of a data firehose. Read about it here.
License
MIT. Please see License file for more details.