Pipes and Error Handling
Explore how to connect Node.js streams using the pipe() method to manage data flow efficiently without manual read or write calls. Understand the challenges of error handling in stream pipelines and learn methods to catch and handle errors properly to prevent resource leaks and ensure graceful stream destruction.
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Connecting streams using pipes
The concept of Unix pipes was invented by Douglas Mcllroy. This enabled the output of a program to be connected to the input of the next. Take a look at the following command:
echo Hello World! | sed s/World/Node.js/g
In the preceding command, echo will write Hello World! to its standard output, which is then redirected to the standard input of the sed command (thanks to the pipe | operator). Then, sed replaces any occurrence of World with Node.js and prints the result to its standard output (which, this time, is the console).
In a similar way, Node.js streams can be connected using the pipe() method of the Readable stream, which has the following interface:
readable.pipe(writable, [options])