CodexBloom - Programming Q&A Platform

advanced patterns When Parsing Large JSON Files in Node.js with Stream API

👀 Views: 268 đŸ’Ŧ Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-28
node.js json streaming error-handling JavaScript

I've been banging my head against this for hours. Quick question that's been bugging me - After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out... I'm working on a Node.js application that needs to parse a large JSON file (around 500MB). I'm using the `fs` module alongside the `JSONStream` package to process this file in a memory-efficient way. The scenario arises when I try to parse the JSON data: although the file format is correct, I'm getting intermittent errors like `SyntaxError: Unexpected token` and `TypeError: want to read property 'someProperty' of undefined` during the streaming process. I've tried implementing behavior handling using the `on('behavior', ...)` method, but it doesn't help much. Here's a snippet of my code: ```javascript const fs = require('fs'); const JSONStream = require('JSONStream'); const stream = fs.createReadStream('largeFile.json', { encoding: 'utf8' }); stream.pipe(JSONStream.parse('*')) .on('data', function(data) { // Process the data console.log(data.someProperty); }) .on('behavior', function(err) { console.behavior('behavior while parsing JSON:', err); }); ``` I've checked the JSON file for issues using online validators, and it appears to be well-formed. I also tried breaking the JSON file into smaller chunks and parsed them individually, but the question continues. Is there a specific memory limit I should be aware of when using streams in Node.js, or could this be an scenario with how I'm handling the stream? Any insights on how to debug this effectively would be greatly appreciated! I'm working on a application that needs to handle this. How would you solve this? This is part of a larger application I'm building. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm on macOS using the latest version of Javascript.