Sometimes, we want to execute shell command with Node.js.
In this article, we’ll look at how to execute shell command with Node.js.
How to execute shell command with Node.js?
To execute shell command with Node.js, we can use the child_process module’s spawn function.
For instance, we write
const runCmd = (cmd, args, callBack) => {
const { spawn } = require("child_process");
let child = spawn(cmd, args);
let resp = "";
child.stdout.on("data", (buffer) => {
resp += buffer.toString();
});
child.stdout.on("end", () => {
callBack(resp);
});
};
runCmd("ls", ["-l"], (text) => {
console.log(text);
});
to call the child_process module’s spawn function with the cmd command string and the args argument string array.
We call stdout.on to listen to the data event which has the output of the cmd command.
And then we call on again to listen to the end event which is emitted when the command finishes running.
We run callBack in the end event callback with the resp string.
Conclusion
To execute shell command with Node.js, we can use the child_process module’s spawn function.
