fatfs-wasm

Overview

fatfs-wasm is a Javascript/Typescript FAT filesystem driver for in-memory images. It provides an intuitive API for reading and writing files and data in FAT images. Under the hood, it is powered by the popular FatFS C library by CHaN, compiled to WebAssembly.

Features:

• Javascript-friendly abstractions over FatFS's API
• Read, write, rename, stat, chmod, and delete files
• Create, iterate, rename, and delete directories
• Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, and LFN with Unicode

Limitations:

• Async drivers not supported
• FAT volumes limited by the size of a Javascript ArrayBuffer, which is much less than exFAT limits.
• Does not include FatFS's code page conversion capabilities

Getting Started

fatfs-wasm can be used from Node.js or the browser.

In the browser, include fatfs.min.js, which makes fatfs-wasm available in the window namespace:

<script src="fatfs.min.js"></script>
<script>
    const { FatFsDisk } = window['fatfs-wasm']
    // ...
</script>

Using npm

npm install --save fatfs-wasm

Then in Javascript

const { FatFsDisk, FatFsFormat, FatFsMode } = require('fatfs-wasm')

Using

FatFs can be used with typed arrays to create disk images:

const data = new Uint8Array(1 << 23);
const disk = await FatFsDisk.create(data);
disk.mkfs();   // Format filesystem
disk.mount();  // Mount workspace

Create partitions on one in-memory physical disk:

const data = new Uint8Array(24 * 1024 * 1024);
const disk = await FatFsDisk.create(data);
disk.fdisk([50, 50]);
disk.mkfs({ path: '0:' });
disk.mkfs({ path: '1:' });

Use the exFAT/GPT-capable WASM build when needed:

const { FatFsDisk, FatFsFormat } = require('fatfs-wasm');

const disk = await FatFsDisk.create(data, { exfat: true });
disk.mkfs({ fmt: FatFsFormat.EXFAT });

Or open existing ones:

const response = await fetch('disk.img');
const data = new Uint8Array(await response.arrayBuffer());
const disk = await FatFsDisk.create(data);
disk.mount();  // Mount workspace

Once a workspace is mounted, the library provides APIs for manipulating files:

const file = disk.open('file.txt', FatFsMode.READ);
const buffer = new Uint8Array(1024);
file.read(buffer);
file.close();

// Or, for convenience:
const contents = disk.readFile('file.txt');

As well as iterating directories

const dir = disk.openDir('folder');
for (const file of dir) {
    // ...
}
dir.close();

See the API documentation for details

API Documentation

API Documentation

Modifying FatFs C Code

FatFS has many feature gates defined using the preprocessor. See native/ff16/source/ffconf.h to make adjustments. Please note that any changes to the C code must be reflected in the src/fatfs.ts wrapper, which is not automatically generated. Make changes at your own risk.

To build, open a terminal in MacOS, Linux, or WSL with clang installed and run the build script:

cd native
./build.sh

This will build ff.wasm and ff_exfat.wasm and copy them to the src directory.

Running Tests

npx vitest