FsSet

Filesystem-backed implementation of JavaScript Set class

FsSet implements JavasScript Set class API, storing values in a file. This is specially useful to exchange small snippets of data between different processes, like a set of processes PIDs.

Set API is synchronous, so maybe there could be some perfomance issues with high load, but it has been developed tried to remove any extra overload, keeping the file descriptors opened to write directly to the filesystem cache. Another limitation of current implementation is that it only support as values strings without nulls (currently being use to separate values inside the file).

Regarding concurrency, usage of sync APIs gives protection inside the process itself, while access by multiple processes is protected by module proper-filelock and the fact that implementation is stateless, reading the file data from the filesystem cache before doing any operation.

API

In addition to basic Set API, FsSet has some additional methods:

constructor(path, options)

• path: path to the file where the set will be stored
• options
  • bufferSize: size of the buffer used to read the file. Default is 16KB (Node.js default)
  • cleanAfterRead: if provided, function to remove values read from the file. Useful when it's possible there's stale data in the file. Default is null (no cleanup)
  • lockfile: options to config the proper-lockfile module. By default, it uses proper-lockfile's default options

close()

Closes the file descriptor and releases the lock. No more operations can be done in the FsSet instance after closing it.

async lock(func, ...rest)

Allow to group multiple operations in a single lock. It's reentrant, so it's possible to call it multiple times, and lock will be released only when all the calls to lock are done.

• func: function to execute inside the lock
• rest: arguments to pass to the function