Manipulating file paths

1433429254.js

/**
 * Normalizing paths
 * you can use the normalize function present in the path module to normalize path, string, thus taking care of .., ., and //.
*/

var path = require('path');
path.normalize('/foo/bar//baz/asdf/quux/..');
// => '/foo/bar/baz/asdf'

/**
* Joining paths
* by using path.join(), you can concatenate path strings.
*/

var path = require('path');
path.join('/foo', 'bar', 'bax/asdf', 'quux', '..');
// => '/foo/bar/baz/asdf'

/**
 * Resolving paths
 * you can resolve a series of paths into a normalized absolute path by path.resolve().
 * it does not tap into the underlying filesystem to try to see if the path exists; it simply manipulates path.
*/

var path = require('path');
path.resolve('/foo/bar', './baz');
// => /foo/bar/baz
path.resolve('/foo/bar', '/tmp/file/');
// => /tmp/file

// if the resulting path is not absolute, path.resolve will prepend the current working directory to the path

path.resolve('wwwroot', 'static_files/png', '../gif/image.gif');
// if currently in /home/myself/node, it returns
// => /home/myself/node/wwwroot/static_files/gif/image.gif

/**
 * Finding the relative path between two absolute paths
*/

var path = require('path');
path.relative('/data/orandea/test/aaa', 'data/orandea/impl/bbb');
// => ../../impl/bbb

/**
 * Extracting components of path
*/

var path = require('path');
path.dirname('foo/bar/baz/asdf/quux.txt');
// => /foo/bar/baz/asdf

path.basename('/foo/bar/bax/asdf/quux.txt');
// => quux.txt

// you can subtract the file extension from the result by passing in an optional second argument with the expected extension 
path.basename('/foo/bar/bax/asdf/quux.txt', '.txt');
// => quux

//you can determine the extension by using path.extname() like so
path.extname('/a/b/index.html');
// => '.html'
path.extname('a/b.c/index');
// => ''
path.extname('a/b.c/d.');
// => '.'

/**
 * Determining the existence of a path
*/

path.exists('/etc/passwd', function(exists){
  console.log('exists: ', exists);
  // => true
});

path.exists('/does_not_exist', function(exists){
  console.log('exists: ', exists);
  // => false
});

// In Node v0.8, path.exists wall replaced by fs.exists