Gathering detailed insights and metrics for chokidar
As of June 2024, the npm registry hosts over 2 million packages, making it one of the largest open-source software repositories in the world.
Gathering detailed insights and metrics for chokidar
As of June 2024, the npm registry hosts over 2 million packages, making it one of the largest open-source software repositories in the world.
npm install chokidar
95.6
Supply Chain
100
Quality
82.5
Maintenance
100
Vulnerability
11,019 Stars
1,694 Commits
583 Forks
88 Watching
4 Branches
109 Contributors
Updated on 13 Nov 2024
Minified
Minified + Gzipped
JavaScript (61.62%)
TypeScript (38.38%)
Cumulative downloads
Total Downloads
Last day
12.2%
11,613,322
Compared to previous day
Last week
16.2%
61,017,282
Compared to previous week
Last month
17.1%
246,667,922
Compared to previous month
Last year
5.6%
2,443,048,310
Compared to previous year
1
Minimal and efficient cross-platform file watching library
There are many reasons to prefer Chokidar to raw fs.watch / fs.watchFile in 2024:
rename
atomic
option
awaitWriteFinish
option
Chokidar relies on the Node.js core fs
module, but when using
fs.watch
and fs.watchFile
for watching, it normalizes the events it
receives, often checking for truth by getting file stats and/or dir contents.
The fs.watch
-based implementation is the default, which
avoids polling and keeps CPU usage down. Be advised that chokidar will initiate
watchers recursively for everything within scope of the paths that have been
specified, so be judicious about not wasting system resources by watching much
more than needed. For some cases, fs.watchFile
, which utilizes polling and uses more resources, is used.
Made for Brunch in 2012, it is now used in ~30 million repositories and has proven itself in production environments.
Sep 2024 update: v4 is out! It decreases dependency count from 13 to 1, removes support for globs, adds support for ESM / Common.js modules, and bumps minimum node.js version from v8 to v14. Check out upgrading.
Install with npm:
1npm install chokidar
Use it in your code:
1import chokidar from 'chokidar'; 2 3// One-liner for current directory 4chokidar.watch('.').on('all', (event, path) => { 5 console.log(event, path); 6}); 7 8 9// Extended options 10// ---------------- 11 12// Initialize watcher. 13const watcher = chokidar.watch('file, dir, or array', { 14 ignored: (path, stats) => stats?.isFile() && !path.endsWith('.js'), // only watch js files 15 persistent: true 16}); 17 18// Something to use when events are received. 19const log = console.log.bind(console); 20// Add event listeners. 21watcher 22 .on('add', path => log(`File ${path} has been added`)) 23 .on('change', path => log(`File ${path} has been changed`)) 24 .on('unlink', path => log(`File ${path} has been removed`)); 25 26// More possible events. 27watcher 28 .on('addDir', path => log(`Directory ${path} has been added`)) 29 .on('unlinkDir', path => log(`Directory ${path} has been removed`)) 30 .on('error', error => log(`Watcher error: ${error}`)) 31 .on('ready', () => log('Initial scan complete. Ready for changes')) 32 .on('raw', (event, path, details) => { // internal 33 log('Raw event info:', event, path, details); 34 }); 35 36// 'add', 'addDir' and 'change' events also receive stat() results as second 37// argument when available: https://nodejs.org/api/fs.html#fs_class_fs_stats 38watcher.on('change', (path, stats) => { 39 if (stats) console.log(`File ${path} changed size to ${stats.size}`); 40}); 41 42// Watch new files. 43watcher.add('new-file'); 44watcher.add(['new-file-2', 'new-file-3']); 45 46// Get list of actual paths being watched on the filesystem 47let watchedPaths = watcher.getWatched(); 48 49// Un-watch some files. 50await watcher.unwatch('new-file'); 51 52// Stop watching. The method is async! 53await watcher.close().then(() => console.log('closed')); 54 55// Full list of options. See below for descriptions. 56// Do not use this example! 57chokidar.watch('file', { 58 persistent: true, 59 60 // ignore .txt files 61 ignored: (file) => file.endsWith('.txt'), 62 // watch only .txt files 63 // ignored: (file, _stats) => _stats?.isFile() && !file.endsWith('.txt'), 64 65 awaitWriteFinish: true, // emit single event when chunked writes are completed 66 atomic: true, // emit proper events when "atomic writes" (mv _tmp file) are used 67 68 // The options also allow specifying custom intervals in ms 69 // awaitWriteFinish: { 70 // stabilityThreshold: 2000, 71 // pollInterval: 100 72 // }, 73 // atomic: 100, 74 75 interval: 100, 76 binaryInterval: 300, 77 78 cwd: '.', 79 depth: 99, 80 81 followSymlinks: true, 82 ignoreInitial: false, 83 ignorePermissionErrors: false, 84 usePolling: false, 85 alwaysStat: false, 86}); 87
chokidar.watch(paths, [options])
paths
(string or array of strings). Paths to files, dirs to be watched
recursively.options
(object) Options object as defined below:persistent
(default: true
). Indicates whether the process
should continue to run as long as files are being watched.ignored
function, regex, or path. Defines files/paths to be ignored.
The whole relative or absolute path is tested, not just filename. If a function with two arguments
is provided, it gets called twice per path - once with a single argument (the path), second
time with two arguments (the path and the
fs.Stats
object of that path).ignoreInitial
(default: false
). If set to false
then add
/addDir
events are also emitted for matching paths while
instantiating the watching as chokidar discovers these file paths (before the ready
event).followSymlinks
(default: true
). When false
, only the
symlinks themselves will be watched for changes instead of following
the link references and bubbling events through the link's path.cwd
(no default). The base directory from which watch paths
are to be
derived. Paths emitted with events will be relative to this.usePolling
(default: false
).
Whether to use fs.watchFile (backed by polling), or fs.watch. If polling
leads to high CPU utilization, consider setting this to false
. It is
typically necessary to set this to true
to successfully watch files over
a network, and it may be necessary to successfully watch files in other
non-standard situations. Setting to true
explicitly on MacOS overrides the
useFsEvents
default. You may also set the CHOKIDAR_USEPOLLING env variable
to true (1) or false (0) in order to override this option.usePolling: true
)
interval
(default: 100
). Interval of file system polling, in milliseconds. You may also
set the CHOKIDAR_INTERVAL env variable to override this option.binaryInterval
(default: 300
). Interval of file system
polling for binary files.
(see list of binary extensions)alwaysStat
(default: false
). If relying upon the
fs.Stats
object that may get passed with add
, addDir
, and change
events, set
this to true
to ensure it is provided even in cases where it wasn't
already available from the underlying watch events.depth
(default: undefined
). If set, limits how many levels of
subdirectories will be traversed.awaitWriteFinish
(default: false
).
By default, the add
event will fire when a file first appears on disk, before
the entire file has been written. Furthermore, in some cases some change
events will be emitted while the file is being written. In some cases,
especially when watching for large files there will be a need to wait for the
write operation to finish before responding to a file creation or modification.
Setting awaitWriteFinish
to true
(or a truthy value) will poll file size,
holding its add
and change
events until the size does not change for a
configurable amount of time. The appropriate duration setting is heavily
dependent on the OS and hardware. For accurate detection this parameter should
be relatively high, making file watching much less responsive.
Use with caution.
options.awaitWriteFinish
can be set to an object in order to adjust
timing params:awaitWriteFinish.stabilityThreshold
(default: 2000). Amount of time in
milliseconds for a file size to remain constant before emitting its event.awaitWriteFinish.pollInterval
(default: 100). File size polling interval, in milliseconds.ignorePermissionErrors
(default: false
). Indicates whether to watch files
that don't have read permissions if possible. If watching fails due to EPERM
or EACCES
with this set to true
, the errors will be suppressed silently.atomic
(default: true
if useFsEvents
and usePolling
are false
).
Automatically filters out artifacts that occur when using editors that use
"atomic writes" instead of writing directly to the source file. If a file is
re-added within 100 ms of being deleted, Chokidar emits a change
event
rather than unlink
then add
. If the default of 100 ms does not work well
for you, you can override it by setting atomic
to a custom value, in
milliseconds.chokidar.watch()
produces an instance of FSWatcher
. Methods of FSWatcher
:
.add(path / paths)
: Add files, directories for tracking.
Takes an array of strings or just one string..on(event, callback)
: Listen for an FS event.
Available events: add
, addDir
, change
, unlink
, unlinkDir
, ready
,
raw
, error
.
Additionally all
is available which gets emitted with the underlying event
name and path for every event other than ready
, raw
, and error
. raw
is internal, use it carefully..unwatch(path / paths)
: Stop watching files or directories.
Takes an array of strings or just one string..close()
: async Removes all listeners from watched files. Asynchronous, returns Promise. Use with await
to ensure bugs don't happen..getWatched()
: Returns an object representing all the paths on the file
system being watched by this FSWatcher
instance. The object's keys are all the
directories (using absolute paths unless the cwd
option was used), and the
values are arrays of the names of the items contained in each directory.Check out third party chokidar-cli, which allows to execute a command on each change, or get a stdio stream of change events.
Sometimes, Chokidar runs out of file handles, causing EMFILE
and ENOSP
errors:
bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device bash: no job control in this shell
Error: watch /home/ ENOSPC
There are two things that can cause it.
fs
module used by chokidar: let fs = require('fs'); let grfs = require('graceful-fs'); grfs.gracefulify(fs);
echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p
.fs.watch
usePolling: true
, which will switch backend to resource-intensive fs.watchFile
All fsevents-related issues (WARN optional dep failed
, fsevents is not a constructor
) are solved by upgrading to v4+.
If you've used globs before and want do replicate the functionality with v4:
1// v3 2chok.watch('**/*.js'); 3chok.watch("./directory/**/*"); 4 5// v4 6chok.watch('.', { 7 ignored: (path, stats) => stats?.isFile() && !path.endsWith('.js'), // only watch js files 8}); 9chok.watch('./directory'); 10 11// other way 12import { glob } from 'node:fs/promises'; 13const watcher = watch(await Array.fromAsync(glob('**/*.js'))); 14 15// unwatching 16// v3 17chok.unwatch('**/*.js'); 18// v4 19chok.unwatch(await glob('**/*.js'));
Why was chokidar named this way? What's the meaning behind it?
Chowkidar is a transliteration of a Hindi word meaning 'watchman, gatekeeper', चौकीदार. This ultimately comes from Sanskrit _ चतुष्क_ (crossway, quadrangle, consisting-of-four). This word is also used in other languages like Urdu as (چوکیدار) which is widely used in Pakistan and India.
MIT (c) Paul Miller (https://paulmillr.com), see LICENSE file.
No vulnerabilities found.
Reason
30 commit(s) and 22 issue activity found in the last 90 days -- score normalized to 10
Reason
license file detected
Details
Reason
no binaries found in the repo
Reason
no dangerous workflow patterns detected
Reason
packaging workflow detected
Details
Reason
0 existing vulnerabilities detected
Reason
dependency not pinned by hash detected -- score normalized to 7
Details
Reason
Found 8/23 approved changesets -- score normalized to 3
Reason
no effort to earn an OpenSSF best practices badge detected
Reason
detected GitHub workflow tokens with excessive permissions
Details
Reason
branch protection not enabled on development/release branches
Details
Reason
security policy file not detected
Details
Reason
project is not fuzzed
Details
Reason
SAST tool is not run on all commits -- score normalized to 0
Details
Score
Last Scanned on 2024-11-04
The Open Source Security Foundation is a cross-industry collaboration to improve the security of open source software (OSS). The Scorecard provides security health metrics for open source projects.
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