How to implement a writable stream

To create your own writable stream, you have three possibilities.

Create your own class

For this you’ll need:

  1. To extend the Writable class.
  2. To call the Writable constructor in your own constructor.
  3. To define a _write() method in the prototype of your stream object.

Here’s an example:

var stream = require('stream');
var util = require('util');

function EchoStream () { // step 2
  stream.Writable.call(this);
};
util.inherits(EchoStream, stream.Writable); // step 1
EchoStream.prototype._write = function (chunk, encoding, done) { // step 3
  console.log(chunk.toString());
  done();
}

var myStream = new EchoStream(); // instanciate your brand new stream
process.stdin.pipe(myStream);

Extend an empty Writable object

Instead of defining a new object type, you can instanciate an empty Writable object and implement the _write() method:

var stream = require('stream');
var echoStream = new stream.Writable();
echoStream._write = function (chunk, encoding, done) {
  console.log(chunk.toString());
  done();
};

process.stdin.pipe(echoStream);

Use the Simplified Constructor API

If you’re using io.js, you can use the simplified constructor API:

var writable = new stream.Writable({
  write: function(chunk, encoding, next) {
    console.log(chunk.toString());
    next();
  }
});

Use an ES6 class in Node 4+

class EchoStream extends stream.Writable {
  _write(chunk, enc, next) {
    console.log(chunk.toString());
    next();
  }
}

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