What is a Pipe?

A pipe in Node.js is a mechanism for connecting two streams: a readable stream and a writable stream. This allows data to automatically flow from the readable stream to the writable stream, facilitating efficient data flow management.

Advantages of Using Pipes

• Simplicity: Facilitates data transfer between streams without the need to manually handle data events.
• Efficiency: Improves efficiency in handling large volumes of data without having to store them entirely in memory.
• Modularity: Allows composing complex functionalities by chaining multiple pipes.

Basic Use of Pipe

Below is a basic example of how to use pipe() in Node.js to read data from one file and write it to another file.

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In this example, data is read from the source.txt file and directly written to destination.txt using the pipe method.

Chaining Pipes

You can chain multiple pipes to create more complex data flows. Here is an example of reading a file, compressing it, and then writing the compressed file.

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In this case, the data read from source.txt is compressed using zlib.createGzip() and then written to destination.txt.gz.

Handling Errors in Streams

It's important to handle errors when working with pipes, as any error in any of the streams can interrupt the data flow.

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Summary

Pipes are a powerful feature in Node.js that simplify and optimize data transfer between streams. Using them will allow you to handle large flows of data more efficiently and structurally.

Diagrama de Pipes