ez-spawn

EZ-Spawn

Simple, consistent sync/async process spawning

Features

• Normalizes the results of spawn and spawnSync calls through the async and sync functions that ez-spawn provides.

• Normalizes the arguments passed into the spawn and spawnSync

• Both return the same process object no matter how it is called.

• Tested on Mac, Linux, and Windows as well as Node v4-7

Example

let sync = require('ez-spawn').sync;
let async = require('ez-spawn').async;

// Make a synchronous call
let process = sync('ls', '-al');

//Make an asynchronous call that accepts a callback
async('ls', '-a' '-l', (process) => {
  console.log(process.status);
  //Etc...
});

//Make an asynchronous call that returns a promise
async('ls -al')
  .then((process) => {
    console.log(process.stdout);
    //Etc...
  })
  .catch((err) => {
    //Etc...
  })

Installation

Node

Install using npm:

npm install ez-spawn

Then require it in your code:

let async = require("ez-spawn").async;
let sync = require("ez-spawn").sync;

API

sync(command, [arguments], [options])

Synchronously spawns a process and returns a Process object

• command - The command string to be executed.
• arguments - (optional) An array or a series of individual string parameters that are the arguments to be associated with the command parameter.
• options - (optional) The spawnSync options object.

async(command, [arguments], [options], callback?)

Asynchronously spawns a process and returns a promise or a callback if specified that contains a Process object.

• command - The command string to be executed.
• arguments - (optional) An array or a series of individual string parameters that are the arguments to be associated with the command parameter.
• options - (optional) The spawnSync options object.
• callback - (optional) If a callback is not specified then spawned process results are returned as a Promise

Process

Both async and sync both return a Process object that contains the following properties. It mirrors the object returned by spawnSync.

• command - The command that was used to spawn the process.
• args - The command-line arguments that were passed to the process.
• pid - The numeric process ID assigned by the operating system.
• stdout - The process's standard output.
• stderr - The process's error output.
• output - All program output [stdin, stdout, stderr].
• exitCode - The process's exit code.
• signal - The signal used to kill the process, if applicable.
• error - The error that occurred while spawning or killing the process, if any.
• toString() - Returns the full command and arguments used to spawn the process.

Contributing

We welcome any contributions, enhancements, and bug-fixes. File an issue on GitHub and submit a pull request.

Building/Testing

To build/test the project locally on your computer:

1. Clone this repo
   git clone hhttps://github.com/rkrauskopf/ez-spawn.git

2. Install dependencies
   npm install

3. Run the tests
   npm test

License

ez-spawn is 100% free and open-source, under the MIT license. Use it however you want.