Write Binary to Disk

Questions
1

Hey n8n community,
I have been using n8n a bit and am now trying to get some automation for GitHub stats going.
Mostly things like no. of stars, forks ect.

So i set up a GitHub node to fetch data from repo, which works fine.
In the next step I extract the data from the json response and parse it to a html table.

Then I would save said table to disk, and everything seems to work fine,
I just cant figure out where the file is or why it is not actually saved to disk.

Running n8n locally.

2

Did you check the .n8n directory? as you didnt specifiy a path

3

Thanks for the tip,
I just checked it, but there is only a config file.

4

Try specifying a path, see if it’s outputted there

5

Yes specifying the full path should solve that problem. At least if npm installed. For people that run it with Docker it is important to mount a folder to which files can be written

6

Sorry,
but specifiying the full path did not really change it, but I am getting a more specific error at least.
Now I get
"No binary data set. So file can not be written!"
I use the node version, so no docker.

Is my approach completely wrong somewhere?

Maybe I should add what I am trying to achieve:
I am looking to pull some daily basic stats from different APIs (github, twitter, youtube …) and combine them in a table for diagrams ect. down the line.

Happy to turn this into an example node if i get it working :slight_smile:

    {
      "nodes": [
        {
          "parameters": {},
          "name": "Start",
          "type": "n8n-nodes-base.start",
          "typeVersion": 1,
          "position": [
            220,
            110
          ]
        },
        {
          "parameters": {
            "functionCode": "function formatDate(date) {\n    var d = new Date(date),\n        month = '' + (d.getMonth() + 1),\n        day = '' + d.getDate(),\n        year = d.getFullYear();\n\n    if (month.length < 2) \n        month = '0' + month;\n    if (day.length < 2) \n        day = '0' + day;\n\n    return [day, month, year].join('.');\n}\n\nconst formattedStars = {\n  date : formatDate(new Date()),\n  stars : items[0].json[\"stargazers_count\"],\n}\nreturn [{json : formattedStars}];"
          },
          "name": "Function5",
          "type": "n8n-nodes-base.function",
          "typeVersion": 1,
          "position": [
            580,
            110
          ]
        },
        {
          "parameters": {
            "operation": "toFile",
            "fileFormat": "html",
            "options": {}
          },
          "name": "Spreadsheet File2",
          "type": "n8n-nodes-base.spreadsheetFile",
          "typeVersion": 1,
          "position": [
            750,
            110
          ]
        },
        {
          "parameters": {
            "options": {
              "rawData": true
            }
          },
          "name": "Spreadsheet File",
          "type": "n8n-nodes-base.spreadsheetFile",
          "typeVersion": 1,
          "position": [
            930,
            110
          ]
        },
        {
          "parameters": {
            "fileName": "=/Users/vinckr/tmp/"
          },
          "name": "Write Binary File",
          "type": "n8n-nodes-base.writeBinaryFile",
          "typeVersion": 1,
          "position": [
            1100,
            110
          ],
          "notesInFlow": false
        },
        {
          "parameters": {
            "resource": "repository",
            "operation": "get",
            "owner": "torvalds",
            "repository": "=linux"
          },
          "name": "GHStats",
          "type": "n8n-nodes-base.github",
          "typeVersion": 1,
          "position": [
            420,
            110
          ],
          "credentials": {
            "githubApi": "n8n-github"
          }
        }
      ],
      "connections": {
        "Start": {
          "main": [
            [
              {
                "node": "GHStats",
                "type": "main",
                "index": 0
              }
            ]
          ]
        },
        "Function5": {
          "main": [
            [
              {
                "node": "Spreadsheet File2",
                "type": "main",
                "index": 0
              }
            ]
          ]
        },
        "Spreadsheet File2": {
          "main": [
            [
              {
                "node": "Spreadsheet File",
                "type": "main",
                "index": 0
              }
            ]
          ]
        },
        "Spreadsheet File": {
          "main": [
            [
              {
                "node": "Write Binary File",
                "type": "main",
                "index": 0
              }
            ]
          ]
        },
        "GHStats": {
          "main": [
            [
              {
                "node": "Function5",
                "type": "main",
                "index": 0
              }
            ]
          ]
        }
      }
    }
7

Option 1: Try deleting the read from spreadsheet as it will return JSON and the write binary file is looking for binary data.
Option 2: Insert a “Move Binary Data” node set to From Json to Binary before the Write to binary file

8

Thanks a ton for being so patient, both options work :heart_eyes:

I will share my completed workflow when I got it all set up.

9

Good to hear that it worked :slight_smile: