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Overview

The readFile function reads the contents of a file synchronously and returns it as a UTF-8 encoded string.

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Function Signature

readFile(filePath: string): string

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Parameters

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filePath
string
required
The path to the file to read. Can be relative or absolute. Relative paths are resolved from the current working directory.

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Return Value

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content
string
The contents of the file as a UTF-8 encoded string.

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Implementation Details

The function performs the following steps:
  1. Resolves the provided file path to an absolute path using path.resolve()
  2. Reads the file synchronously using fs.readFileSync() with UTF-8 encoding
  3. Returns the file contents as a string

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Usage Example

import { readFile } from './tools/readFile';

// Read a configuration file
const config = readFile('./config.json');
console.log(config);

// Read with absolute path
const data = readFile('/home/user/data.txt');

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Error Handling

This function will throw an error if:
  • The file does not exist
  • The file cannot be read due to permissions
  • The path points to a directory instead of a file
This is a synchronous operation and will block the event loop until the file is read. For large files or performance-critical applications, consider using asynchronous file operations.

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Source Code

import fs from 'fs';
import path from 'path';

export const readFile = (filePath: string) => {
    const absPath = path.resolve(filePath);
    return fs.readFileSync(absPath, 'utf-8');
};

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