Node.js Web Crawler using Request and Cheerio

spider.js

var request = require('request');
var cheerio = require('cheerio');
var fs = require('fs');

var data = fs.createWriteStream('data.txt', {'flags': 'a'});

var urlsToCrawl = [];

var spider = function(url) {
	var index = urlsToCrawl.indexOf(url);
	// Remove the current url we're crawling from the list to be crawled.
	if(index > -1) {
		urlsToCrawl.splice(index, 1);
	}

	try {
		request(url, function(error, response, body) {
			if(!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
				var $ = cheerio.load(body);

				data.write($.html());
				console.log('Data saved for url: ' + url);

				$('a').each(function(i, element) {
					var link = element.attribs.href;
					urlsToCrawl.push(link);
				});
				// console.log(urlsToCrawl.length);
				return spider(urlsToCrawl[0]);
			} else {
				// This was probably a relative url or a page anchor,
				// which I don't account for yet.
				// console.log(urlsToCrawl.length);
				return spider(urlsToCrawl[0]);
				// console.log(error);
			}
		});
	} catch(error) {
		return spider(urlsToCrawl[0]);
		// console.log(error);
	}
};

spider('https://news.ycombinator.com/');