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  3. Node.js — Get a File Name (With or Without Extension)

Node.js — Get a File Name (With or Without Extension)

Node.js can extract a file name from a given path. The path can be an absolute or relative path. You can then let Node.js do the parsing and return the file path.

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Get the File Name With Extension

You can retrieve the file name from a given path using Node.js’ path module. The path module comes with the Node.js runtime.

Retrieve the file name using the Path.basename method. This method returns the trailing name component from a file path, including the file extension. For example, it returns avatar.png from the path /home/user/avatar.png:

import Path from 'path'

const filename = Path.basename('/home/user/avatar.png')  
// 'avatar.png'

Get the File Name Without Extension

Sometimes you want to retrieve the file name without the extension. You may use the built-in Node.js path module to do that. You can use the Path.parse method to parse a given file path into the individual parts. Then, retrieve the file name without the extension: 

import Path from 'path'

const filename = Path.parse('/home/user/avatar.png').name  
// 'avatar'

Use the @supercharge/fs Package

I’m the maintainer of the @supercharge/fs package providing convenient file system utilities. The @supercharge/fs package comes with handy methods to retrieve the file name:

  • Fs.basename(path): returns the file name with extension
  • Fs.filename(path): returns the file name without extension

Here’s the sample code on how to use both functions:

import Fs from '@supercharge/fs'

Fs.basename('/home/user/avatar.png')  
// 'avatar.png'

Fs.filename('/home/user/avatar.png')  
// 'avatar'

That’s it!

Mentioned Resources

Marcus Pöhls

Marcus is a fullstack JS developer. He’s passionate about the hapi framework for Node.js and loves to build web apps and APIs. Creator of Futureflix and the “learn hapi” learning path.

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