App base path from a module in NodeJS

node.js module path fs
Clint Powell picture Clint Powell · Feb 7, 2014 · Viewed 53.5k times · Source

I'm building a web app in NodeJS, and I'm implementing my API routes in separate modules. In one of my routes I'm doing some file manipulation and I need to know the base app path. if I use __dirname it gives me the directory that houses my module of course.

I'm currently using this to get the base app path (given that I know the relative path to the module from base path):

path.join(__dirname, "../../", myfilename)

Is there a better way than using ../../? I'm running Node under Windows so there is no process.env.PWD and I don't want to be platform specific anyway.

Answer

Tom picture Tom · Feb 7, 2014

The approach of using __dirname is the most reliable one. It will always give you correct directory. You do not have to worry about ../../ in Windows environment as path.join() will take care of that.

There is an alternative solution though. You can use process.cwd() which returns the current working directory of the process. That command works fine if you execute your node application from the base application directory. However, if you execute your node application from different directory, say, its parent directory (e.g. node yourapp\index.js) then __dirname mechanism will work much better.

I hope that will help.

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