Save a zip file to a node.js server using node-webkit

It was so incredibly hard to do this. And it shouldn't be. So here's the code you need to do it.

nodeFileSystem = require('fs');
API.downloadItrData(newBook.isbn, newBook.version).then(function(response) {
    if (response.status === 200 && response.data.success) {

        var zipLocation = response.data.data.zipLocation;
        var zipSaveLocation = Constants.PATH_BASE + Constants.PATH_ITR_FOLDER + newBook.isbn + "/" + newBook.version + ".zip";

        $http.get(zipLocation,
            {
                responseType: "blob"
            }
        ).then(function(zipResult) {
                var reader = new FileReader();
                reader.addEventListener("loadend", function() {
                    nodeFileSystem.writeFile(zipSaveLocation, toBuffer(reader.result));
                });
                reader.readAsArrayBuffer(zipResult.data);
        });
    }
});

Ok, but what does the code do? Keep in mind this is just a stub, so this is more of a non-working example rather than code that can be copied and pasted into your work.

First, using an API, I check to see if my book (basically, an ebook) has an update. If it does, I take from the returned JSON to the location of the zip file (zipLocation), which I am going to save to the server (zipSaveLocation).

I then use the angular function $http.get() to download the zip. By setting the responseType in the config I can get the zip file as a "blob" instead of a string.

Once it has downloaded (the promise function .then fires) I use the HTML5 FileReader class to convert the JS Blob to a JS arrayBuffer so it can be converted to a Node.js Buffer so the node filesystem can save it.

I really hope this saves someone the 6 hours or so it took me to figure out :)