Run Postman’s Newman in an AWS Lambda function: specify JSON export location

The Problem

After getting my NodeJS application using Newman with the JSON reporter to work locally I started testing it in Lambda locally with SAM CLI. I encountered the following error:

Unhandled Promise Rejection     {"errorType":"Runtime.UnhandledPromiseRejection","errorMessage":"Error: EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/var/task/newman'","reason":{"errorType":"Error","errorMessage":"EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/var/task/newman'","code":"EROFS","errno":-30,"syscall":"mkdir","path":"/var/task/newman","help":"error creating path for file \"newman/newman-run-report-2020-07-09-15-46-40-040-0.json\" for json-reporter","stack":["Error: EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/var/task/newman'"]},"promise":{},"stack":["Runtime.UnhandledPromiseRejection: Error: EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/var/task/newman'","    at process.<anonymous> (/var/runtime/index.js:35:15)","    at process.emit (events.js:310:20)","    at process.EventEmitter.emit (domain.js:482:12)","    at processPromiseRejections (internal/process/promises.js:209:33)","    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:98:32)"]}

The meat of this error is EROFS: read-only file system, mkdir '/var/task/newman'"
Newman is attempting to write to /var/task/newman
This is fine locally but Lambda only allows writing to /tmp/ (max 500mb)

Q: What if I need scratch space on disk for my AWS Lambda function?
Each Lambda function receives 500MB of non-persistent disk space in its own /tmp directory.

https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/faqs/

The Fix

To start with the Newman call looked like this:

newman.run(
                {
                    collection: require(collectionFilePath),
                    reporters: 'json'
                }, 
                .....

To change the export directory I added: reporter: { json : { export : '/tmp/' } }

The working Newman call looks like this:

newmanData = newman.run(
                {
                    collection: require(collectionFilePath),
                    reporters: 'json',
                    reporter: { json : { export : '/tmp/' } }
                }, 
                .....

Thanks goes to

Michael – sqlbot for his comment on Stack Overflow pointing out the Lambda tmp directory.