Asynchronous directory tree walk in node.js

I wrote an asynchronous directory tree walker in node.js. Note the use of Continuation Passing Style in the fileCb callback. That allows the callback to perform its own asynchronous operations before continuing the directory walk.

(This code is provided under the Apache Licence 2.0.)


// asynchronous tree walk
// root - root path
// fileCb - callback function (file, next) called for each file
// -- the callback must call next(falsey) to continue the iteration,
// or next(truthy) to abort the iteration.
// doneCb - callback function (err) called when iteration is finished
// or an error occurs.
//
// example:
//
// forAllFiles('~/',
// function (file, next) { sys.log(file); next(); },
// function (err) { sys.log("done: " + err); });
function forAllFiles(root, fileCb, doneCb) {
    fs.readdir(root, function processDir(err, files) {
        if (err) {
            fileCb(err);
        } else {
            if (files.length > 0) {
                var file = root + '/' + files.shift();
                fs.stat(file, function processStat(err, stat) {
                    if (err) {
                        doneCb(err);
                    } else {
                        if (stat.isFile()) {
                            fileCb(file, function(err) {
                                if (err) {
                                    doneCb(err);
                                } else {
                                    processDir(false, files);
                                }
                            });
                        } else {
                            forAllFiles(file, fileCb, function(err) {
                                if (err) {
                                    doneCb(err);
                                } else {
                                    processDir(false, files);
                                }
                            });
                        }
                    }
                });
            } else {
                doneCb(false);
            }
        }
    });
}

Comments

projectmoon said…
I've been messing around with attempting to walk a directory tree asynchronously all day and finally found this. It looks to be the only example on the internet that actually works right.

Still slowly wrapping my head around it (lol, closures), but it's cool. Thanks.
projectmoon said…
Oh, and using path.normalize on `var file = root + '/' + files.shift();` would get rid of // when running it on the root directory.

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