Get app root path

[Alan Hoffmeister]

Hello there!

How can I get the main path of the app?

Take a look at this example:

1) I have a module that return the app path, and I install it globally

    npm install -g mymodule

2) Than I have my app.js installed on /home/myuser/app.js

   mymodule = require('mymodule');

   console.log(mymodule.path());

3) mymodule.path() needs to return the app path: /home/myuser

How can I do this?

--
Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

[mscdex]

On May 26, 9:13 pm, Alan Hoffmeister <alanhoffmeis...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> How can I get the main path of the app?

// module
var path = require('path');

exports.path = function() {
return path.dirname(module.parent.filename);
};

[Alan Hoffmeister]

@mscdex Thanks, but what if the parent is inside a folder on the main path? It would return /home/myuser/somefolder instead of /home/mysuser.

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Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

2012/5/26 mscdex <msc...@gmail.com>

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[Alan Hoffmeister]

I think that I got the answer:

//mymodyle.js

path = require('path');

exports.path = path.dirname(process.mainModule.filename);

Can I trust on the information passed by process.mainModule.filename?

--
Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

2012/5/26 Alan Hoffmeister <alanhof...@gmail.com>

[Anand George]

If you need to find the app path couldn't you just use __dirname.

[Alan Hoffmeister]

__dirname return the path of the script that is calling it, not the app root path...

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Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

2012/5/26 Anand George <mranan...@gmail.com>

[Anand George]

Not sure if I understood your question right.

console.log(__dirname) in app.js which is in the path /home/myuser/app.js will return /home/myuser.

Isn't this what you intend.

[Alan Hoffmeister]

Yep, you understood, but what if i need to know the root path from a required() module that is somewhere eles on the system?

[Anand George]

It still works. This is what I have done. Created two folders

/home/anand/testing/dirpath - the npm module

/home/anand/testing/pathtest - test folder

dirpath has the following files

index.js

exports.path = __dirname;

and

package.json

{

  "name": "dirpath",

  "version": "0.0.1",

  "private": true,

"main": "index.js",

  "dependencies": {

  },

  "engines": {

    "node": "v0.6.x"

  }

}

run npm link in dirpath so that the module is available globally

pathtest has one file app.js

var dirpath = require('dirpath');

console.log(dirpath.path);

Make dirpath module available in current directory using npm link dirpath

Next run app.js and the console logs

/home/anand/node/Testing/dirpath

[mscdex]

On May 26, 11:33 pm, Anand George <mranandgeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Next run app.js and the console logs
>
> /home/anand/node/Testing/dirpath

I think he wants the path of app.js from the module, so: '/home/anand/
node/Testing/pathtest' is what he is expecting.

[Anand George]

Ok. I get it now. And thanks for both solutions offered. Guess it's useful in cases like the socket.io implementation where you wish to link some client-side libraries in the path.

[Alan Hoffmeister]

@mscdex that's it.

I need this to parse config files, and now I can require() my parser from everywhere without the need to send the app path :)

--
Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

2012/5/27 Anand George <mranan...@gmail.com>

[Anand George]

Coming back to your question

npm install -g mymodule will not be available when you require it using 

mymodule = require('mymodule')

See  http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/03/23/npm-1-0-global-vs-local-installation/ 

[Alan Hoffmeister]

@Anand, yep, but you can use `npm link mymodule`

[Anand George]

Hope you don't mind my asking... but do you really need a parser for a config file. Couldn't  it just be required as below:

config.js

module.exports = {

    host: "localhost",

    port: 8000

}

app.js

var c = require('./config')

console.log(c.host + c.port);

[Alan Hoffmeister]

Yup, I could do this, but I'm writting a MVC framework and splitting routes, views, rpc, models, configs, validations, translations an other things between multiple folders, that's because I really don't like to have my huge app inside one big js.

My main idea is to maintain a simple module that could load this parts from everywhere, I mean that I can use:

var mvc = require('mvc');

users = mvc.model('User');

conf = mvc.conf();

Inside myapp/controller/index.js, inside myapp/rpc/user.js or whatever, without worrying how far I'm from my user model schema or my config files...

This way I just need to configure my MVC main module to look inside the right places and forget ugly relative paths like require('../../config/database/production') and etc.

I don't know if I could express myself the way that I intended, but that's my idea :)

--
--
Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

[C. Mundi]

Amen.  I went through the same thing.  I wish this had been a higher design priority for node, but I think I see why it wasn't.  Moving JavaScript out of the browser and onto the server comes with some challenges.

[Alan Hoffmeister]

@Shogun very nice! I thought global was some evil thing..

@Mundi, yes, I came from PHP and I really miss this folder pattern...

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Att,
Alan Hoffmeister

[Nathan Quinn]

process.cwd();

[Sávio Lucena]

Alan,

I don’t know if that previews answer gave you what you were looking for but anyway just adding to it:

From Azat Mardan:

4.7 __dirname vs. process.cwd

__dirname is an absolute path to the file in which this global variable was called, while process.cwd

is an absolute path to the process that runs this script. The latter might not be the same as the former

if we started the program from a different folder, e.g., $ node ./code/program.js.

Sávio Lucena

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