A Recursive File Search Algorithm in JavaScript

TLDR🥱!!!

Just copy the code from here you lazy bum! 😒

What’s Going On? 🤔

So the thing is,

• I wanted a way to search for a file inside a directory and all its subdirectories for this electron app that I was working on.
• Didn’t wanted to use any libraries, because … abandonware 😒.
• Lastly, I only wanted to provide a top-level path to the directory, so that the user doesn’t have to worry about the subdirectories.

So these 👆🏻 three requirements, led me to this 👇🏻

The Code 💻

Now the code might look a bit scary 👻, but just go through it line by line and you’ll understand I promise. 😊

     // substitute with `import` statements if type is `module`
const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");
  
function fileSearchRecursive(dirToSearchIn, fileToSearch, callbackFn) {
  let results = [];
  
  fs.readdir(dirToSearchIn, (err, list) => {
    if (err) return callbackFn(err, []);
  
    let pending = list.length;
  
    if (!pending) return callbackFn(null, results);
  
    list.forEach((file) => {
      const filename = file;
  
      file = path.join(dirToSearchIn, file);
  
      fs.stat(file, (_, stat) => {
        if (stat && stat.isDirectory()) {
          fileSearchRecursive(file, fileToSearch, (_, res) => {
            results = results.concat(res);
            if (!--pending) callbackFn(null, results);
          });
        } else {
          if (filename.toLowerCase() === fileToSearch.toLowerCase()) {
            results = results.concat(file);
          }
  
          if (!--pending) callbackFn(null, results);
        }
      });
    });
  });
}
  

And call it like this:

     fileSearchRecursive(__dirname, "rhymbit.exe", (err, res) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  } else {
    console.log(res);
  }
});
  

That’s it!, thanks 🤗 for reading all the way till down here