Binary File Loader

ComfyUI has loaders for checkpoints, LoRAs, images, video. It does not have a loader for "arbitrary file on disk" - which is exactly the hole this node fills. Binary File Loader reads any file from your filesystem into the pack's BINARY_DATA format, no questions asked. .dci archives, .deb packages, images, archives, config blobs - if the OS can read it, this node can load it as raw bytes.

The mechanism is dead simple: you give it a path, it reads the file with plain Python file I/O, and hands back the bytes plus the path. There's no type sniffing, no format detection, no decoding - which is the point. It's the front door for the pack's binary data flow, the thing that lets you run the DCI preview/analysis/deb tools against files that already exist instead of only freshly generated ones.

Input: File Path - a single string, and it's optional (default empty). If you leave it blank the node returns empty bytes, so it won't crash an upstream workflow that hasn't decided on a path yet. This is one of the few nodes in the pack where you'll usually hardcode a path or feed one in from a text node - ComfyUI doesn't give you a file browser widget for a raw string.

Outputs:

• Binary Data - the file contents as bytes. Feed it into DCI Preview, DCI Analysis, the Base64 Encoder, or any node that consumes BINARY_DATA.
• File Path - the path echoed back, which is handy when you're chaining: save it to a variable/text node and pass it to a Saver so round-tripped files land where you expect.

Installing

This is part of the comfyui-dci pack, so the install is the same light one - Pillow and numpy, no models:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/zccrs/comfyui-dci
cd comfyui-dci && pip install -r requirements.txt

Or via ComfyUI Manager, searching "DCI Image Export Extension" / "comfyui-dci", then restart.

Where people get burned

• It reads, it doesn't find. No path auto-completion, no folder browsing. Typos and missing files just yield an error message in the console and empty output - check your path carefully.
• Relative paths resolve against ComfyUI's working directory, which is usually where you launched the server, not necessarily where you think you are. Absolute paths are the safer habit here.
• It's generic by design. Because it loads anything, it won't tell you if a file is a valid DCI archive - that validation happens when you feed the bytes into the DCI-specific nodes, which have detailed error reporting of their own.

Think of it as the pack's cat command. Modest, unglamorous, and you'll be surprised how often you need it - especially when you want to open a .dci or .deb that already exists on disk and poke at it with the analysis and preview tools.