Introduction to the Path Module in Node.js

Cheikhany Ejiwen — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 19:08:00 +0000

Path module is one of the most useful built-in modules in NodeJS. Be able to use this module efficiently increases the clarity and organization of our code on one hand, and shorten the time spending on maintaining it on the other hand. In this article, We're going to look at four helper functions to make path manipulation in our projects easier.

path.dirname

The path.dirname() method returns the directory name of a path. It's helpful to know the directory that a file is in.

let ourPath = path.dirname('c:/data/code/test.js');
console.log(ourPath) // return 'c:/data/code'

path.join

The join method takes two ore more path segments and joins them into one string that can be used anywhere as file path. let's suppose that we need the file path of a jpg image (myDog.jpg) for simplicity's sake.

let filepath = path.join(__dirname, '/images/pics/',myDog,'jpg);
console.log(filePath); //returns 'C:/...../iamges/pics/myDog.jpg'

path.basename

the basename() method returns the name of the file or directory that the file path points to.

let ourBaseName =path.basename('D:/codeNia/mySite/index.html');
console.log(ourBaseName); //returns 'index.html'

path.extname

extname method allow us to know the extension of the given path.

let myHtml = path.extname('index.html);
console.log(myhtml) // returns .html

That's it, but you can find more by checking out the official path documentation

ES6 template Literals ... More control over dynamic strings

Cheikhany Ejiwen — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 07:59:43 +0000

Before ES6 came out with template Strings in 2015. The strings in JS have very limited in its syntax but also very limited in its functionality.

To enable you to solve more complex problems and concatenate strings together in a smooth way. Not just String to Strings but String with data values.ES6 template literals provide the syntax that allows you to work with Strings in a safer and cleaner way.
Gone will be the hours of long suffer with long string concatenation!

Basic usage

The syntax of template strings is very simple, just use backticks instead of single or double quotes.

let msg = `A string`;

If we want to surround a special world with a single or double quotes we can do that simply .. because we have used a different character to define our string.

Multiline strings

Template strings make multiline much simpler. we can simply add a line break where we want to, press enter and there it is.

let msg = `Hi,

Good job.

Regards`;

so we can format our string to look like as we wish.

Expressions

Template literals provide an easy way to contain placeholders and expressions into strings.You do so by using the ${...}

const name = 'Naya';
const msg = `Hi ${name}`;

Inside of the curly braces, it's often gonna be a variable, but it could be a whole JavaScript expression or mathematical expression. Can be a function call, it can even be a template literal inside of that expression if you need it to be.

Mathematical expression

const msg = `You have ${1+3} Dogs`;

function call

const msg = `Hi ${nameFn()}`;
console.log(msg);
function nameFn() {
  return "Naya";
}

This is my first blog post and i'm happy to join in.

DEV Community: Cheikhany Ejiwen