javascript - How do I read the contents of a Node.js stream into a string variable?

Question

I'm hacking on a Node program that uses smtp-protocol to capture SMTP emails and act on the mail data. The library provides the mail data as a stream, and I don't know how to get that into a string.

I'm currently writing it to stdout with stream.pipe(process.stdout, { end: false }), but as I said, I need the stream data in a string instead, which I can use once the stream has ended.

How do I collect all the data from a Node.js stream into a string?

Answer 1

Another way would be to convert the stream to a promise (refer to the example below) and use then (or await) to assign the resolved value to a variable.

function streamToString (stream) {
  const chunks = [];
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    stream.on('data', (chunk) => chunks.push(Buffer.from(chunk)));
    stream.on('error', (err) => reject(err));
    stream.on('end', () => resolve(Buffer.concat(chunks).toString('utf8')));
  })
}

const result = await streamToString(stream)