Question

I’m trying to get a node.js script to display the contents of a text file if the contents of the file changes.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

var http = require('http');
var fs = require("fs");

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

fs.watch("/Users/{username}/Desktop/data.txt",function(event,file) {

    fs.readFile('/Users/{username}/Desktop/data.txt', 'utf8', function (err,data) {
        if (err) {
            return console.log(err);
        }

        res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
        res.end(data);
        //^ this doesn't work, just returns a blank page

    });
});

}).listen(1337, '0.0.0.0');

Unfortunately, it only displays a blank page. What am I doing wrong…?

Answer 1

How about this:

var http = require('http');
var fs = require("fs");

function dataHandler(data) {
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
    res.end(data);
}

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

fs.watch("/Users/{username}/Desktop/data.txt",function(event,file) {

    fs.readFile('/Users/{username}/Desktop/data.txt', 'utf8', function (err,data) {
        if (err) {
            return console.log(err);
        }

        dataHandler(data);

    });
});

}).listen(1337, '0.0.0.0');