If you’ve tried to use the Node.js fs.promises API, you might have noticed that there doesn’t appear to be a cross-platform way of using fs.readFile() to read from process.stdin (such as process.stdin). Using the old, callback-based API, you could pass in a numeric file descriptor, such as:

import fs from "fs";

const text = fs.readFileSync(0, "utf8");

However, when using the fs.promises version of readFile(), you can no longer use numeric file descriptors (an error is thrown). While you can use the string "/dev/stdin" on Linux machines, but that doesn’t work on Windows machines.

The easiest way to read stream using promises is to write your own function do so. Here’s what mine looks like:

function readStream(stream, encoding = "utf8") {
    
    stream.setEncoding(encoding);

    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        let data = "";
        
        stream.on("data", chunk => data += chunk);
        stream.on("end", () => resolve(data));
        stream.on("error", error => reject(error));
    });
}

const text = await readStream(process.stdin);

The key is to listen to three events:

1. data for the pieces of data being read
2. end to resolve the promise with the accumulated data
3. error to reject the promise if there’s an error

Because readStream() returns a promise, you can use await to call it, making it fit in with the rest of the fs.promises API.