How can I get the tasklist result of exec() from child_process in JSON format?

Question

When I execute tasklist on child_process the stdout retuns the processes in Unicode string format which I cannot easily query.

This is my code;

var exec = require('child_process').exec;
...

exec('tasklist', function(err, stdout, stderr) {
    ...
});

This is a part of stdout;

    \r\nImage Name                     PID Session Name        Session#    Mem Usage\r\n========================= ======== ================ =========== ============\r\nSystem Idle Process              0 Services                   0          8 K\r\nSystem                           4 Services                   0      3,900 K\r\nRegistry                       148 Services                   0     57,232 K\r\nsmss.exe                       636 Services                   0        444 K\r\ncsrss.exe                      820 Services                   0      3,604 K\r\nwininit.exe                    716 Services                   0      2,824 K\r\nservices.exe                     8 Services                   0      9,180 K\r\nlsass.exe...
            

How can I get the stdout in JSON format?

I tried several methods to convert from Unicode to JSON but could not find a simple way.

Answer 1

parse the string by splitting it into lines, then further splitting each line into an array of values. You can then use this array to construct a JSON object

example:

var exec = require('child_process').exec;

exec('tasklist', function(err, stdout, stderr) {
    var lines = stdout.split("\n");
    var json = [];

    for (var i = 0; i < lines.length; i++) {
        var line = lines[i].trim();
        if (line === "") continue;
        var values = line.split(/\s+/);
        json.push({
            "imageName": values[0],
            "pid": values[1],
            "sessionName": values[2],
            "sessionNumber": values[3],
            "memUsage": values[4]
        });
    }

    console.log(json);
});