procinfo

This module is a simple module that is designed to provide process information on *nix systems. It only exists because I couldn't find an existing module that suited my particular use case. Unlike the other modules procinfo is designed to give you one-shot information on a process and leaves scheduling / monitoring to you.

Usage

Using procinfo is simple once you understand that procinfo has two modes of operation:

• search
• detail

Search mode is used when proc info is provided either a string or regular expression to search for in the command name output of the ps system command. For instance:

procinfo('node', function(err, results) {
    // output the pids that have been found matching node (case insensitive)
    console.log(results.pids);
 
    // now output the basic process details for the first process
    console.log(results[results.pids[0]]);
});

Using search mode only provides limited information on the process (essentially just the pid and the command used to initiate the process). For more detailed information we call procinfo providing either a number or an array of pids to locate:

procinfo(1, function(err, results) {
    // output the pids that have been found (should be just pid: 1)
    console.log(results.pids);
   
    // now output the process details
    console.log(results[1]);
});

At present (probably likely to change) the following fields are included in the default process output:

• state
• ppid
• time
• etime
• cpu
• pcpu
• pmem
• command
• comm
• args

NOTE: The args value is different from the default ps args field definition, whereby it includes just the command-line arguments and not the original command. Additionally, the arguments are provided in an array rather than a string. This has been done because the ps implementation of args and command producing the same output seems redundant.

If you would prefer a different set of ps fields then you can set the procinfo.fields property to match your requirements:

procinfo.fields = ['state', 'etime'];