Process

The process object is a global object and can be accessed from anywhere. It is an instance of EventEmitter.

Event: 'exit'

Emitted when the process is about to exit. This is a good hook to perform constant time checks of the module's state (like for unit tests). The main event loop will no longer be run after the 'exit' callback finishes, so timers may not be scheduled.

Example of listening for exit:

process.on('exit', function() {
  setTimeout(function() {
    console.log('This will not run');
  }, 0);
  console.log('About to exit.');
});

Event: 'uncaughtException'

Emitted when an exception bubbles all the way back to the event loop. If a listener is added for this exception, the default action (which is to print a stack trace and exit) will not occur.

Example of listening for uncaughtException:

process.on('uncaughtException', function(err) {
  console.log('Caught exception: ' + err);
});

setTimeout(function() {
  console.log('This will still run.');
}, 500);

// Intentionally cause an exception, but don't catch it.
nonexistentFunc();
console.log('This will not run.');

Note that uncaughtException is a very crude mechanism for exception handling and may be removed in the future.

Don't use it, use domains instead. If you do use it, restart your application after every unhandled exception!

Do not use it as the node.js equivalent of On Error Resume Next. An unhandled exception means your application - and by extension node.js itself - is in an undefined state. Blindly resuming means anything could happen.

Think of resuming as pulling the power cord when you are upgrading your system. Nine out of ten times nothing happens - but the 10th time, your system is bust.

You have been warned.

Signal Events

Emitted when the processes receives a signal. See sigaction(2) for a list of standard POSIX signal names such as SIGINT, SIGUSR1, etc.

Example of listening for SIGINT:

// Start reading from stdin so we don't exit.
process.stdin.resume();

process.on('SIGINT', function() {
  console.log('Got SIGINT.  Press Control-D to exit.');
});

An easy way to send the SIGINT signal is with Control-C in most terminal programs.

process.stdout

A Writable Stream to stdout.

Example: the definition of console.log

console.log = function(d) {
  process.stdout.write(d + '\n');
};

process.stderr and process.stdout are unlike other streams in Node in that writes to them are usually blocking. They are blocking in the case that they refer to regular files or TTY file descriptors. In the case they refer to pipes, they are non-blocking like other streams.

To check if Node is being run in a TTY context, read the isTTY property on process.stderr, process.stdout, or process.stdin:

$ node -p "Boolean(process.stdin.isTTY)"
true
$ echo "foo" | node -p "Boolean(process.stdin.isTTY)"
false

$ node -p "Boolean(process.stdout.isTTY)"
true
$ node -p "Boolean(process.stdout.isTTY)" | cat
false

See the tty docs for more information.

process.stderr

A writable stream to stderr.

process.stderr and process.stdout are unlike other streams in Node in that writes to them are usually blocking. They are blocking in the case that they refer to regular files or TTY file descriptors. In the case they refer to pipes, they are non-blocking like other streams.

process.stdin

A Readable Stream for stdin. The stdin stream is paused by default, so one must call process.stdin.resume() to read from it.

Example of opening standard input and listening for both events:

process.stdin.resume();
process.stdin.setEncoding('utf8');

process.stdin.on('data', function(chunk) {
  process.stdout.write('data: ' + chunk);
});

process.stdin.on('end', function() {
  process.stdout.write('end');
});

process.argv

An array containing the command line arguments. The first element will be 'node', the second element will be the name of the JavaScript file. The next elements will be any additional command line arguments.

// print process.argv
process.argv.forEach(function(val, index, array) {
  console.log(index + ': ' + val);
});
This will generate:

$ node process-2.js one two=three four
0: node
1: /Users/mjr/work/node/process-2.js
2: one
3: two=three
4: four

process.execPath

This is the absolute pathname of the executable that started the process.

Example:

/usr/local/bin/node

process.execArgv

This is the set of node-specific command line options from the executable that started the process. These options do not show up in process.argv, and do not include the node executable, the name of the script, or any options following the script name. These options are useful in order to spawn child processes with the same execution environment as the parent.

Example:

$ node --harmony script.js --version
results in process.execArgv:

['--harmony']
and process.argv:

['/usr/local/bin/node', 'script.js', '--version']

process.abort()

This causes node to emit an abort. This will cause node to exit and generate a core file.

process.chdir(directory)

Changes the current working directory of the process or throws an exception if that fails.

console.log('Starting directory: ' + process.cwd());
try {
  process.chdir('/tmp');
  console.log('New directory: ' + process.cwd());
}
catch (err) {
  console.log('chdir: ' + err);
}

process.cwd()

Returns the current working directory of the process.

console.log('Current directory: ' + process.cwd());

process.env

An object containing the user environment. See environ(7).

process.exit([code])

Ends the process with the specified code. If omitted, exit uses the 'success' code 0.

To exit with a 'failure' code:

process.exit(1); The shell that executed node should see the exit code as 1.