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  3. Node.js — Retrieve the OS Directory for Temporary Files

Node.js — Retrieve the OS Directory for Temporary Files

During development, you may need to store temporary data on the local file system. This temporary data could be anything short-lived, like the content you read from another source. You may want to transfer this temporary content to your application and have to find storage that you don’t need to clean up yourself.

All operating systems provide a temporary directory. The OS cleans up files in this temporary directory automatically after a given period of time. If you’re storing non-sensitive data, this might be the right place for you to store temporary content and let the OS clean up after you.

This tutorial shows you how to retrieve the path of your operating system’s temporary directory.

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Get the Temporary Directory of Your Operating System

Node.js ships with a built-in os module that provides useful methods to interact with the operating system. One of the methods is os.tmpdir() returning the operating system’s path to the default directory for temporary files.

Here’s an example of how to retrieve the directory path for temporary files on macOS:

import os from 'os'

os.tmpdir()  
// /var/folders/71/lxgy9vm54fb7tjcwr55mwccr0000gn/T

Generally, you can assume the temporary directory exists on your file system. When interacting with directories or files inside the directory, you still need to (recursively) create the file structure or check for existence when reading files. Otherwise, Node.js throws the related exceptions when trying to access files that don’t exist.

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 a handy Fs.tempDir() method creating a folder inside the operating system’s temporary directory.

import Fs from '@supercharge/fs'

await Fs.tempDir()  
// /var/folders/71/lxgy9vm54fb7tjcwr55mwccr0000gn/T/1b114e534d3ff95ea5951bb3db5c1cb3

Changed Handling Coming to @supercharge/fs in 4.0.0

The @supercharge/fs package is in development for a new major version 4.0.0. Starting from 4.0.0, the Fs.tempDir() method works the same way as Node.js and returns the path to the OS’s temporary directory. If you want to create a dedicated, temporary folder use the newly added Fs.createTempDir() method:

// this code will only work in @supercharge/fs version 4.0.0
import Fs from '@supercharge/fs'

Fs.tempDir()  
// /var/folders/71/lxgy9vm54fb7tjcwr55mwccr0000gn/T

// creates the directory on the file system and returns the created path
await Fs.createTempDir()  
// /var/folders/71/lxgy9vm54fb7tjcwr55mwccr0000gn/T/1b114e534d3ff95ea5951bb3db5c1cb3

Enjoy retrieving temporary file paths in Node.js!

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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