Note An UnRTF v0.19.3 Windows binary is included with this module which, due to its age, has several issues, such as the inability to convert RTF documents generated from 2007 onwards, and a bug in the noPictures option that still generates pictures. It is recommended that whatever application is using the node-unrtf module is run in a Linux environment using the latest available UnRTF binaries, which do not have these bugs.

node-unrtf

Asynchronous node.js wrapper for the UnRTF RTF conversion program

Overview

UnRTF is a CLI program that allows for the manipulation and extraction of data from RTF documents such as converting RTF files to HTML or TXT.

The node-unrtf module provides an asynchronous node.js wrapper around said CLI program for easier use.

Installation

Install using npm:

npm i node-unrtf

Linux and macOS/Darwin support

For Linux and Mac users, you will need to download the unrtf binary separately.

An example of downloading the binary on a Debian system:

sudo apt-get install unrtf

For macOS, the binary can be installed with Homebrew:

brew install unrtf

Example usage

Please refer to the JSDoc comments in the source code or the generated type definitions for information on the available options.

Async Await

Example of an async await call to convert an RTF file to HTML in an ESM environment:

import { UnRTF } from "node-unrtf";

const file = "test_document.rtf";
const unRtf = new UnRTF();
const options = {
	outputHtml: true,
};

const res = await unRtf.convert(file, options);
console.log(res);

Promise chaining

Example of calling unRTF.convert with a promise chain in a CJS environment:

const { UnRTF } = require("node-unrtf");

const file = "test_document.rtf";
const unRtf = new UnRTF("/usr/bin");
const options = {
	outputHtml: true,
};

unRTF
	.convert(file, options)
	.then((res) => {
		console.log(res);
		return res;
	})
	.catch((err) => {
		console.error(err);
		throw err;
	});

Removing images generated by UnRTF

As mentioned in the note block at the top of this README, the noPictures option does not remove images when used with UnRTF < v0.20.4 and will write them to the current working directory. To remove images generated by UnRTF it is recommended to use a globbing module such as glob in conjunction with the node:fs/promises module to find and remove them:

import { unlink } from "node:fs/promises";
import { UnRTF } from "node-unrtf";
import { glob } from "glob";

const file = "test_resources/test_files/test-rtf-complex.rtf";
const unRtf = new UnRTF();
const options = {
	outputHtml: true,
	noPictures: true,
};

await unRtf.convert(file, options);

const files = await glob("*.{emf,wmf}");
await Promise.all(files.map((filed) => unlink(filed)));

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and any help is greatly appreciated!

See the contributing guide for details on how to get started. Please adhere to this project's Code of Conduct when contributing.

License

node-unrtf is licensed under the MIT license.