Write objects into file with Node.js

Building on what deb2fast said I would also pass in a couple of extra parameters to JSON.stringify() to get it to pretty format:

fs.writeFileSync('./data.json', JSON.stringify(obj, null, 2) , 'utf-8');

The second param is an optional replacer function which you don't need in this case so null works.

The third param is the number of spaces to use for indentation. 2 and 4 seem to be popular choices.

If you're geting [object object] then use JSON.stringify

fs.writeFile('./data.json', JSON.stringify(obj) , 'utf-8');

It worked for me.

In my experience JSON.stringify is slightly faster than util.inspect. I had to save the result object of a DB2 query as a json file, The query returned an object of 92k rows, the conversion took very long to complete with util.inspect, so I did the following test by writing the same 1000 record object to a file with both methods.

1. JSON.Stringify

   fs.writeFile('./data.json', JSON.stringify(obj, null, 2));
   

Time: 3:57 (3 min 57 sec)

Result's format:

[
  {
    "PROB": "00001",
    "BO": "AXZ",
    "CNTRY": "649"
   },
  ...
]

2. util.inspect

   var util = require('util');
   fs.writeFile('./data.json', util.inspect(obj, false, 2, false));
   

Time: 4:12 (4 min 12 sec)

Result's format:

[ { PROB: '00001',
    BO: 'AXZ',
    CNTRY: '649' },
    ...
]

obj is an array in your example.

fs.writeFileSync(filename, data, [options]) requires either String or Buffer in the data parameter. see docs.

Try to write the array in a string format:

// writes 'https://twitter.com/#!/101Cookbooks', 'http://www.facebook.com/101cookbooks'
fs.writeFileSync('./data.json', obj.join(',') , 'utf-8'); 

Or:

// writes ['https://twitter.com/#!/101Cookbooks', 'http://www.facebook.com/101cookbooks']
var util = require('util');
fs.writeFileSync('./data.json', util.inspect(obj) , 'utf-8');

edit: The reason you see the array in your example is because node's implementation of console.log doesn't just call toString, it calls util.format see console.js source