How to terminate ANY process using Node.js?

Question

Node does not seem to have a system call to kill a process (given I know its PID), or does it?

If there is no built-in function for this, what is a valid cross-platform approach?

Nodejs has a process.kill() method that you can use to kill a process by pid. — TGrif
– TGrif, Commented Dec 17, 2021 at 15:55
@TGrif That's good stuff! The terminate library also uses process.kill under the hood, but it also deals with some processes needing more than one kill signal, and makes sure that all children are killed as well. — Domi
– Domi, Commented Dec 17, 2021 at 16:02

Domi · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-17 14:10:58Z

0

The terminate library has seemingly been built for this purpose. It is cross-platform. (I tried it on Windows and MAC.)

Here is a working sample. It also illustrates how to find PID by PORT.

Example:


const { promisify } = require('util');
/**
 * NOTE: as of 2021, terminate is still callback-based.
 */
const terminate = promisify(require('terminate'));

await terminate(myPid);

console.log('Process terminated.');

Note that if the process does not exist (or in case of any other problems), it will throw, so you might want to try/catch correspondingly.

edited Dec 17, 2021 at 14:10

answered Dec 17, 2021 at 13:10

Domi

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