Parsing huge logfiles in Node.js - read in line-by-line

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16010915

Question

I need to do some parsing of large (5-10 Gb)logfiles in Javascript/Node.js (I'm using Cube).

The logline looks something like:

10:00:43.343423 I'm a friendly log message. There are 5 cats, and 7 dogs. We are in state "SUCCESS".

We need to read each line, do some parsing (e.g. strip out 5, 7 and SUCCESS), then pump this data into Cube (https://github.com/square/cube) using their JS client.

Firstly, what is the canonical way in Node to read in a file, line by line?

It seems to be fairly common question online:

A lot of the answers seem to point to a bunch of third-party modules:

However, this seems like a fairly basic task - surely, there's a simple way within the stdlib to read in a textfile, line-by-line?

Secondly, I then need to process each line (e.g. convert the timestamp into a Date object, and extract useful fields).

What's the best way to do this, maximising throughput? Is there some way that won't block on either reading in each line, or on sending it to Cube?

Thirdly - I'm guessing using string splits, and the JS equivalent of contains (IndexOf != -1?) will be a lot faster than regexes? Has anybody had much experience in parsing massive amounts of text data in Node.js?

Cheers, Victor

Was it helpful?

Solution

I searched for a solution to parse very large files (gbs) line by line using a stream. All the third-party libraries and examples did not suit my needs since they processed the files not line by line (like 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ..) or read the entire file to memory

The following solution can parse very large files, line by line using stream & pipe. For testing I used a 2.1 gb file with 17.000.000 records. Ram usage did not exceed 60 mb.

First, install the event-stream package:

npm install event-stream

Then:

var fs = require('fs')
    , es = require('event-stream');

var lineNr = 0;

var s = fs.createReadStream('very-large-file.csv')
    .pipe(es.split())
    .pipe(es.mapSync(function(line){

        // pause the readstream
        s.pause();

        lineNr += 1;

        // process line here and call s.resume() when rdy
        // function below was for logging memory usage
        logMemoryUsage(lineNr);

        // resume the readstream, possibly from a callback
        s.resume();
    })
    .on('error', function(err){
        console.log('Error while reading file.', err);
    })
    .on('end', function(){
        console.log('Read entire file.')
    })
);

enter image description here

Please let me know how it goes!

OTHER TIPS

You can use the inbuilt readline package, see docs here. I use stream to create a new output stream.

var fs = require('fs'),
    readline = require('readline'),
    stream = require('stream');

var instream = fs.createReadStream('/path/to/file');
var outstream = new stream;
outstream.readable = true;
outstream.writable = true;

var rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: instream,
    output: outstream,
    terminal: false
});

rl.on('line', function(line) {
    console.log(line);
    //Do your stuff ...
    //Then write to outstream
    rl.write(cubestuff);
});

Large files will take some time to process. Do tell if it works.

I really liked @gerard answer which is actually deserves to be the correct answer here. I made some improvements:

  • Code is in a class (modular)
  • Parsing is included
  • Ability to resume is given to the outside in case there is an asynchronous job is chained to reading the CSV like inserting to DB, or a HTTP request
  • Reading in chunks/batche sizes that user can declare. I took care of encoding in the stream too, in case you have files in different encoding.

Here's the code:

'use strict'

const fs = require('fs'),
    util = require('util'),
    stream = require('stream'),
    es = require('event-stream'),
    parse = require("csv-parse"),
    iconv = require('iconv-lite');

class CSVReader {
  constructor(filename, batchSize, columns) {
    this.reader = fs.createReadStream(filename).pipe(iconv.decodeStream('utf8'))
    this.batchSize = batchSize || 1000
    this.lineNumber = 0
    this.data = []
    this.parseOptions = {delimiter: '\t', columns: true, escape: '/', relax: true}
  }

  read(callback) {
    this.reader
      .pipe(es.split())
      .pipe(es.mapSync(line => {
        ++this.lineNumber

        parse(line, this.parseOptions, (err, d) => {
          this.data.push(d[0])
        })

        if (this.lineNumber % this.batchSize === 0) {
          callback(this.data)
        }
      })
      .on('error', function(){
          console.log('Error while reading file.')
      })
      .on('end', function(){
          console.log('Read entirefile.')
      }))
  }

  continue () {
    this.data = []
    this.reader.resume()
  }
}

module.exports = CSVReader

So basically, here is how you will use it:

let reader = CSVReader('path_to_file.csv')
reader.read(() => reader.continue())

I tested this with a 35GB CSV file and it worked for me and that's why I chose to build it on @gerard's answer, feedbacks are welcomed.

I used https://www.npmjs.com/package/line-by-line for reading more than 1 000 000 lines from a text file. In this case, an occupied capacity of RAM was about 50-60 megabyte.

    const LineByLineReader = require('line-by-line'),
    lr = new LineByLineReader('big_file.txt');

    lr.on('error', function (err) {
         // 'err' contains error object
    });

    lr.on('line', function (line) {
        // pause emitting of lines...
        lr.pause();

        // ...do your asynchronous line processing..
        setTimeout(function () {
            // ...and continue emitting lines.
            lr.resume();
        }, 100);
    });

    lr.on('end', function () {
         // All lines are read, file is closed now.
    });

The Node.js Documentation offers a very elegant example using the Readline module.

Example: Read File Stream Line-by-Line

const fs = require('fs');
const readline = require('readline');

const rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: fs.createReadStream('sample.txt'),
    crlfDelay: Infinity
});

rl.on('line', (line) => {
    console.log(`Line from file: ${line}`);
});

Note: we use the crlfDelay option to recognize all instances of CR LF ('\r\n') as a single line break.

Apart from read the big file line by line, you also can read it chunk by chunk. For more refer to this article

var offset = 0;
var chunkSize = 2048;
var chunkBuffer = new Buffer(chunkSize);
var fp = fs.openSync('filepath', 'r');
var bytesRead = 0;
while(bytesRead = fs.readSync(fp, chunkBuffer, 0, chunkSize, offset)) {
    offset += bytesRead;
    var str = chunkBuffer.slice(0, bytesRead).toString();
    var arr = str.split('\n');

    if(bytesRead = chunkSize) {
        // the last item of the arr may be not a full line, leave it to the next chunk
        offset -= arr.pop().length;
    }
    lines.push(arr);
}
console.log(lines);

I had the same problem yet. After comparing several modules that seem to have this feature, I decided to do it myself, it's simpler than I thought.

gist: https://gist.github.com/deemstone/8279565 

var fetchBlock = lineByline(filepath, onEnd);
fetchBlock(function(lines, start){ ... });  //lines{array} start{int} lines[0] No.

It cover the file opened in a closure, that fetchBlock() returned will fetch a block from the file, end split to array (will deal the segment from last fetch).

I've set the block size to 1024 for each read operation. This may have bugs, but code logic is obvious, try it yourself.

node-byline uses streams, so i would prefer that one for your huge files.

for your date-conversions i would use moment.js.

for maximising your throughput you could think about using a software-cluster. there are some nice-modules which wrap the node-native cluster-module quite well. i like cluster-master from isaacs. e.g. you could create a cluster of x workers which all compute a file.

for benchmarking splits vs regexes use benchmark.js. i havent tested it until now. benchmark.js is available as a node-module

Based on this questions answer I implemented a class you can use to read a file synchronously line-by-line with fs.readSync(). You can make this "pause" and "resume" by using a Q promise (jQuery seems to require a DOM so cant run it with nodejs):

var fs = require('fs');
var Q = require('q');

var lr = new LineReader(filenameToLoad);
lr.open();

var promise;
workOnLine = function () {
    var line = lr.readNextLine();
    promise = complexLineTransformation(line).then(
        function() {console.log('ok');workOnLine();},
        function() {console.log('error');}
    );
}
workOnLine();

complexLineTransformation = function (line) {
    var deferred = Q.defer();
    // ... async call goes here, in callback: deferred.resolve('done ok'); or deferred.reject(new Error(error));
    return deferred.promise;
}

function LineReader (filename) {      
  this.moreLinesAvailable = true;
  this.fd = undefined;
  this.bufferSize = 1024*1024;
  this.buffer = new Buffer(this.bufferSize);
  this.leftOver = '';

  this.read = undefined;
  this.idxStart = undefined;
  this.idx = undefined;

  this.lineNumber = 0;

  this._bundleOfLines = [];

  this.open = function() {
    this.fd = fs.openSync(filename, 'r');
  };

  this.readNextLine = function () {
    if (this._bundleOfLines.length === 0) {
      this._readNextBundleOfLines();
    }
    this.lineNumber++;
    var lineToReturn = this._bundleOfLines[0];
    this._bundleOfLines.splice(0, 1); // remove first element (pos, howmany)
    return lineToReturn;
  };

  this.getLineNumber = function() {
    return this.lineNumber;
  };

  this._readNextBundleOfLines = function() {
    var line = "";
    while ((this.read = fs.readSync(this.fd, this.buffer, 0, this.bufferSize, null)) !== 0) { // read next bytes until end of file
      this.leftOver += this.buffer.toString('utf8', 0, this.read); // append to leftOver
      this.idxStart = 0
      while ((this.idx = this.leftOver.indexOf("\n", this.idxStart)) !== -1) { // as long as there is a newline-char in leftOver
        line = this.leftOver.substring(this.idxStart, this.idx);
        this._bundleOfLines.push(line);        
        this.idxStart = this.idx + 1;
      }
      this.leftOver = this.leftOver.substring(this.idxStart);
      if (line !== "") {
        break;
      }
    }
  }; 
}

Reading / Writing files using stream with the native nodejs modules (fs, readline):

const fs = require('fs');
const readline = require('readline');

const rl = readline.createInterface({
                                       input:  fs.createReadStream('input.json'),
                                       output: fs.createWriteStream('output.json')
                                    });

rl.on('line', function(line) {
    console.log(line);

    // Do any 'line' processing if you want and then write to the output file
    this.output.write(`${line}\n`);
});

rl.on('close', function() {
    console.log(`Created "${this.output.path}"`);
});

import * as csv from 'fast-csv';
import * as fs from 'fs';
interface Row {
  [s: string]: string;
}
type RowCallBack = (data: Row, index: number) => object;
export class CSVReader {
  protected file: string;
  protected csvOptions = {
    delimiter: ',',
    headers: true,
    ignoreEmpty: true,
    trim: true
  };
  constructor(file: string, csvOptions = {}) {
    if (!fs.existsSync(file)) {
      throw new Error(`File ${file} not found.`);
    }
    this.file = file;
    this.csvOptions = Object.assign({}, this.csvOptions, csvOptions);
  }
  public read(callback: RowCallBack): Promise < Array < object >> {
    return new Promise < Array < object >> (resolve => {
      const readStream = fs.createReadStream(this.file);
      const results: Array < any > = [];
      let index = 0;
      const csvStream = csv.parse(this.csvOptions).on('data', async (data: Row) => {
        index++;
        results.push(await callback(data, index));
      }).on('error', (err: Error) => {
        console.error(err.message);
        throw err;
      }).on('end', () => {
        resolve(results);
      });
      readStream.pipe(csvStream);
    });
  }
}

import { CSVReader } from '../src/helpers/CSVReader';
(async () => {
  const reader = new CSVReader('./database/migrations/csv/users.csv');
  const users = await reader.read(async data => {
    return {
      username: data.username,
      name: data.name,
      email: data.email,
      cellPhone: data.cell_phone,
      homePhone: data.home_phone,
      roleId: data.role_id,
      description: data.description,
      state: data.state,
    };
  });
  console.log(users);
})();

I have made a node module to read large file asynchronously text or JSON. Tested on large files.

var fs = require('fs')
, util = require('util')
, stream = require('stream')
, es = require('event-stream');

module.exports = FileReader;

function FileReader(){

}

FileReader.prototype.read = function(pathToFile, callback){
    var returnTxt = '';
    var s = fs.createReadStream(pathToFile)
    .pipe(es.split())
    .pipe(es.mapSync(function(line){

        // pause the readstream
        s.pause();

        //console.log('reading line: '+line);
        returnTxt += line;        

        // resume the readstream, possibly from a callback
        s.resume();
    })
    .on('error', function(){
        console.log('Error while reading file.');
    })
    .on('end', function(){
        console.log('Read entire file.');
        callback(returnTxt);
    })
);
};

FileReader.prototype.readJSON = function(pathToFile, callback){
    try{
        this.read(pathToFile, function(txt){callback(JSON.parse(txt));});
    }
    catch(err){
        throw new Error('json file is not valid! '+err.stack);
    }
};

Just save the file as file-reader.js, and use it like this:

var FileReader = require('./file-reader');
var fileReader = new FileReader();
fileReader.readJSON(__dirname + '/largeFile.json', function(jsonObj){/*callback logic here*/});
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