Get the last segment of a path or URL in JavaScript

To get the last segment of a path in JavaScript, combine substring() with lastIndexOf('/'). One line is enough.

While working on a project, I had the need to get the last segment of a path.

In this case it was a filesystem path, but this would work also for URLs.

This is the JavaScript code I used:

const lastItem = thePath.substring(thePath.lastIndexOf('/') + 1)

How does this work?

The thePath string contains a path. Like /Users/Flavio/Desktop, for example.

We identify the index of the last / in the path, calling lastIndexOf('/') on the thePath string.

Then we pass that to the substring() method we call on the same thePath string.

This will return a new string that starts from the position of the last /, + 1 (otherwise we’d also get the / back).

Finally, we assign that string to lastItem.

You can make a simple function for it, too:

const getLastItem = thePath => thePath.substring(thePath.lastIndexOf('/') + 1)

getLastItem('/Users') //'Users'
getLastItem('/Users/Flavio') //'Flavio'
getLastItem('/Users/Flavio/test.jpg') //'test.jpg'
getLastItem('https://flavicopes.com/test') //'test'

What if there’s no slash at all?

The function still works. lastIndexOf('/') returns -1 when it finds nothing, and -1 + 1 is 0, so substring(0) returns the whole string:

getLastItem('test.jpg') //'test.jpg'

That’s what I’d expect: a path with a single segment returns that segment.

Watch out for trailing slashes

There’s one edge case that bites: a path ending with /.

getLastItem('/Users/Flavio/') //''

The last / is the final character, so everything after it is an empty string.

If your paths might end with a slash, split the string instead, drop the empty parts, and take the last element:

const getLastItem = thePath => thePath.split('/').filter(Boolean).pop()

getLastItem('/Users/Flavio/') //'Flavio'
getLastItem('/Users/Flavio/test.jpg') //'test.jpg'

filter(Boolean) removes the empty strings the split produces, and pop() returns the last remaining segment.

One more thing to keep in mind for URLs: a query string stays attached to the last segment. getLastItem('https://flaviocopes.com/axios?page=2') returns 'axios?page=2', not 'axios'. If your URLs carry query strings, strip everything from the ? before extracting the segment.