Node Cookbook - Third Edition

Decoupling I/O

Streams offer two major benefits, the first being fine grained control of memory and CPU resources via incremental processing.

The second is a terse yet powerful common interface, that when used as a pattern can provide a clean separation between source inputs, transformation layers, and target outputs.

For instance, imagine we're implementing a protocol layer, that's most likely going to be used with a TCP server.

We could add a layer of abstraction on top of the net module's TCP server, or we could provide a stream that can be piped to it from a net socket.

In the latter case, our protocol implementation is decoupled from the source, allowing alternative (potentially unforeseen uses). For instance, it may become useful to ...