CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jspath
forvaidya
forvaidya

Reputation: 3315

Expanding / Resolving ~ in node.js

I am new to nodejs. Can node resolve ~ (unix home directory) example ~foo, ~bar to /home/foo, /home/bar

> path.normalize('~mvaidya') 
'~mvaidya'
> path.resolve('~mvaidya') 
'/home/mvaidya/~mvaidya'
>

This response is wrong; I am hoping that ~mvaidya must resolve to /home/mvaidya

Upvotes: 75

Views: 33990

Answers (7)

Jaredcheeda
Jaredcheeda

Reputation: 2012

This is a combination of some of the previous answers with a little more safety added in.

/**
 * Resolves paths that start with a tilde to the user's home directory.
 *
 * @param  {string} filePath '~/GitHub/Repo/file.png'
 * @return {string}          '/home/bob/GitHub/Repo/file.png'
 */
function resolveTilde (filePath) {
  const os = require('os');
  if (!filePath || typeof(filePath) !== 'string') {
    return '';
  }

  // '~/folder/path' or '~' not '~alias/folder/path'
  if (filePath.startsWith('~/') || filePath === '~') {
    return filePath.replace('~', os.homedir());
  }

  return filePath;
}
  • Is a simple helper function that can be called from anywhere.
  • Uses more modern os.homedir() instead of process.env.HOME.
  • Has basic type checking. You may want to default to returning os.homedir() if a non-string is passed in instead of returning empty string.
  • Verifies that path starts with ~/ or is just ~, to not replace other aliases like ~stuff/.
  • Uses a simple "replace first instance" approach, instead of less intuitive .slice(1).

Upvotes: 12

BaiJiFeiLong
BaiJiFeiLong

Reputation: 4655

An example:

const os = require("os");

"~/Dropbox/sample/music".replace("~", os.homedir)

Upvotes: 16

Marcello DeSales
Marcello DeSales

Reputation: 22339

I just needed it today and the only less-evasive command was the one from the os.

$ node
> os.homedir()
'/Users/mdesales'

I'm not sure if your syntax is correct since ~ is already a result for the home dir of the current user

Upvotes: 9

Tony O'Hagan
Tony O'Hagan

Reputation: 22728

This NodeJS library supports this feature via an async callback. It uses the etc-passswd lib to perform the expansion so is probably not portable to Windows or other non Unix/Linux platforms.

If you only want to expand the home page for the current user then this lighter weight API may be all you need. It's also synchronous so simpler to use and works on most platforms.

Examples:

 expandHomeDir = require('expand-home-dir')

 expandHomeDir('~')
 // => /Users/azer

 expandHomeDir('~/foo/bar/qux.corge')
 // => /Users/azer/foo/bar/qux.corge

Another related lib is home-dir that returns a user's home directory on any platform:

https://www.npmjs.org/package/home-dir

Upvotes: 15

Pj Dietz
Pj Dietz

Reputation: 940

As QZ Support noted, you can use process.env.HOME on OSX/Linux. Here's a simple function with no dependencies.

const path = require('path');
function resolveHome(filepath) {
    if (filepath[0] === '~') {
        return path.join(process.env.HOME, filepath.slice(1));
    }
    return filepath;
}

Upvotes: 51

wires
wires

Reputation: 4748

The reason this is not in Node is because ~ expansion is a bash (or shell) specific thing. It is unclear how to escape it properly. See this comment for details.

There are various libraries offering this, most just a few lines of code...

So you probably want to do this yourself.

Upvotes: 22

clay
clay

Reputation: 6017

Today I used https://github.com/sindresorhus/untildify

I run on OSX, worked well.

Upvotes: 1

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