The Node path module
The path module of Node.js provides useful functions to interact with file paths
The path
module provides a lot of very useful functionality to access and interact with the file system.
There is no need to install it. Being part of the Node core, it can be used by requiring it:
const path = require('path')
This module provides path.sep
which provides the path segment separator (\
on Windows, and /
on Linux / macOS), and path.delimiter
which provides the path delimiter (;
on Windows, and :
on Linux / macOS).
These are the path
methods:
- path.basename()
- path.dirname()
- path.extname()
- path.isAbsolute()
- path.join()
- path.normalize()
- path.parse()
- path.relative()
- path.resolve()
path.basename()
Return the last portion of a path. A second parameter can filter out the file extension:
require('path').basename('/test/something') //something
require('path').basename('/test/something.txt') //something.txt
require('path').basename('/test/something.txt', '.txt') //something
path.dirname()
Return the directory part of a path:
require('path').dirname('/test/something') // /test
require('path').dirname('/test/something/file.txt') // /test/something
path.extname()
Return the extension part of a path
require('path').extname('/test/something') // ''
require('path').extname('/test/something/file.txt') // '.txt'
path.isAbsolute()
Returns true if it’s an absolute path
require('path').isAbsolute('/test/something') // true
require('path').isAbsolute('./test/something') // false
path.join()
Joins two or more parts of a path:
const name = 'flavio'
require('path').join('/', 'users', name, 'notes.txt') //'/users/flavio/notes.txt'
path.normalize()
Tries to calculate the actual path when it contains relative specifiers like .
or ..
, or double slashes:
require('path').normalize('/users/flavio/..//test.txt') ///users/test.txt
path.parse()
Parses a path to an object with the segments that compose it:
root
: the rootdir
: the folder path starting from the rootbase
: the file name + extensionname
: the file nameext
: the file extension
Example:
require('path').parse('/users/test.txt')
results in
{
root: '/',
dir: '/users',
base: 'test.txt',
ext: '.txt',
name: 'test'
}
path.relative()
Accepts 2 paths as arguments. Returns the relative path from the first path to the second, based on the current working directory.
Example:
require('path').relative('/Users/flavio', '/Users/flavio/test.txt') //'test.txt'
require('path').relative('/Users/flavio', '/Users/flavio/something/test.txt') //'something/test.txt'
path.resolve()
You can get the absolute path calculation of a relative path using `path.resolve():
path.resolve('flavio.txt') //'/Users/flavio/flavio.txt' if run from my home folder
By specifying a second parameter, resolve
will use the first as a base for the second:
path.resolve('tmp', 'flavio.txt')//'/Users/flavio/tmp/flavio.txt' if run from my home folder
If the first parameter starts with a slash, that means it’s an absolute path:
path.resolve('/etc', 'flavio.txt')//'/etc/flavio.txt'
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