Node.js from fs.readFileSync() to fs.readFile(

Question

I'm trying to get my head around synchronous vs asynchronous in Node.js, in particular for reading an html file.

In a request handler, the synchronous version that i'm using, which works is the following:

var fs = require("fs");
var filename = "./index.html";
var buf = fs.readFileSync(filename, "utf8");

function start(resp) {
    resp.writeHead(200, {"Content-type":"text/html"});
    resp.write(buf);
    resp.end();
    }

exports.start=start; 

1. What would be the version using readFile() ??
2. I understand that readFile is asynchronous so theoretically I should wait that the entire file is read before rendering it, so should I introduce an addListener? I might be confusing different things.

Edit: I have tried to refactor the code like this:

var fs = require("fs");
var filename = "./index.html";
function start (resp) {
    resp.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type":"text/html"});
    fs.readFile(filename, "utf8", function (err, data) {
        if (err) throw err;
        resp.write(data);
        });
    resp.end();
    }

I get a blank page, I guess it's because it should wait that all the data has been read, before resp.write(data), how do i signal this?

Answer 1

var fs = require("fs");
var filename = "./index.html";

function start(resp) {
    resp.writeHead(200, {
        "Content-Type": "text/html"
    });
    fs.readFile(filename, "utf8", function(err, data) {
        if (err) throw err;
        resp.write(data);
        resp.end();
    });
}

Answer 2

This variant is better because you could not know whether file exists or not. You should send correct header when you know for certain that you can read contents of your file. Also, if you have branches of code that does not finish with '.end()', browser will wait until it get them. In other words, your browser will wait a long time.

var fs = require("fs");
var filename = "./index.html";

function start(resp) {

    fs.readFile(filename, "utf8", function(err, data) {
        if (err) {
            // may be filename does not exists?
            resp.writeHead(404, {
                'Content-Type' : 'text/html'
            });
            // log this error into browser
            resp.write(err.toString());
            resp.end();
        } else {

            resp.writeHead(200, {
                "Content-Type": "text/html"
            });      
            resp.write(data.toString());
            resp.end();
        }
    });
}