react-native-fs: RNFS.exists() returns True but RNFS.readFile fails with error: File doesn't exist

async _loadCustomData(fileName, fieldName) {
    const filePath = RNFS.ExternalStorageDirectoryPath + '/Download/' + fileName;

    if (await RNFS.exists(filePath)) {
      console.log("custom data file for " + fieldName + " exists");
      let customData = RNFS.readFile(filePath);
      customData = JSON.parse(customData);

      let newState = {};
      newState[fieldName] = customData;
      this.setState(newState);
    } else {
      console.log("No such file as ", fileName);
    }
 }

The if-condition evaluates to True and console.log displays that the file exists, but, I am unable to read the contents of the file. customeData evaluates to an object like this {_45: 0, _65: 0, _55: null, _75: null}

So, to read this Object, I did this:

RNFS.readFile(filePath)
      .then((contents) => {
          console.log(contents);
          customData = JSON.parse(contents);

          let newState = {};
          newState[fieldName] = customData;
          this.setState(newState);
        })
        .catch((err) => {
          console.log(err.message, err.code);
        });

Now, I get the error: “ENOENT: no such file or directory, open ‘/storage/emulated/0/Download/chimp-list-additional.json’ ENOENT”

I have tried the approach here https://github.com/itinance/react-native-fs/issues/471 but it doesn’t work for me.

Please help!!

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 6 years ago
Reactions: 18
Comments: 15

Most upvoted comments

same issue on copyFile

RNFS.exists(sourceurl)
                .then(exist => {
                    if (exist) {
                        RNFS.copyFile(sourceurl, desPath)
                        .then((res) => {
                            copyResolve(res);
                        })
                        .catch((err) => {
                            copyResolve(err);
                        })
                    } else {
                        copyResolve(false);
                    }
                })

exists returns true , but copy prompt ‘The file “0C635EA5-5BA8-4933-8C01-E570FB7EDACA.jpg” doesn’t exist.’

guoliang1206 on Oct 22, 2020

Not sure how this relates to those seeing issues with unlink or readFile, but for anyone else running into this issue specifically when copyFile returns The file “<sourceFilename>” doesn’t exist.', for us it turned out that the destination directory sometimes didn’t exist. We resolved the issue by just checking for/creating the destination dir. So something like…

const destDirExists = await RNFS.exists(DEST_DIR);
if (!destDirExists) {
    await RNFS.mkdir(DEST_DIR);
}

...

await RNFS.copyFile(
    `${SOURCE_DIR}/${filename}.${fileExt}`,
    `${DEST_DIR}/${filename}.${fileExt}`
);

copyFile could probs benefit from a more specific error message since The file “<sourceFilename>” doesn’t exist.' is a bit misleading, but we’re running version 2.16.6, so not sure if there’s been a fix for pushed since then.

Hopefully this helps someone!

Ivraj on Oct 9, 2021

Hi,

Getting true on if (await RNFS.exists(filePath)) doesn’t mean that the file exists. Since it returns a Promise<boolean>, the if condition will always be true.

Try the following

RNFS.exists(filePath).then((status)=>{ if(status){ console.log('Yay! File exists') } else { console.log('File not exists') } })

SrinathBose on May 8, 2020

same here.

orShapira on Aug 8, 2018