Node.js get file extension

Question

Im creating a file upload function in node.js with express 3.

I would like to grab the file extension of the image. so i can rename the file and then append the file

Answer 1

This solution supports querystrings!

var Url = require('url');
var Path = require('path');

var url = 'http://i.imgur.com/Mvv4bx8.jpg?querystring=true';
var result = Path.extname(Url.parse(url).pathname); // '.jpg'

Answer 2

path.extname will do the trick in most cases. However, it will include everything after the last ., including the query string and hash fragment of an http request:

var path = require('path')
var extname = path.extname('index.html?username=asdf')
// extname contains '.html?username=asdf'

In such instances, you'll want to try something like this:

var regex = /[#\\?]/g; // regex of illegal extension characters
var extname = path.extname('index.html?username=asdf');
var endOfExt = extname.search(regex);
if (endOfExt > -1) {
    extname = extname.substring(0, endOfExt);
}
// extname contains '.html'

Note that extensions with multiple periods (such as .tar.gz), will not work at all with path.extname.

Answer 3

You can use path.parse(path), for example

const path = require('path');
const { ext } = path.parse('/home/user/dir/file.txt');

Answer 4

A simple solution without need for require which solves the multiple period extension problem:

var filename = 'file.with.long.extension';
var ext = filename.substring(filename.indexOf('.')); 
//ext = '.with.long.extension'

Or if you don't want the leading dot:

var filename = 'file.with.long.extension';
var ext = filename.substring(filename.indexOf('.')+1); 
//ext = 'with.long.extension'

Make sure to test that the file has an extension too.

Answer 5

The following function splits the string and returns the name and extension no matter how many dots there are in the extension. It returns an empty string for the extension if there is none. Names that start with dots and/or white space work also.

function basext(name) {
  name = name.trim()
  const match = name.match(/^(\.+)/)
  let prefix = ''
  if (match) {
    prefix = match[0]
    name = name.replace(prefix, '')
  }
  const index = name.indexOf('.')
  const ext = name.substring(index + 1)
  const base = name.substring(0, index) || ext
  return [prefix + base, base === ext ? '' : ext]
}

const [base, ext] = basext('hello.txt')

Answer 6

It's a lot more efficient to use the substr() method instead of split() & pop()

Have a look at the performance differences here: http://jsperf.com/remove-first-character-from-string

// returns: 'html'
var path = require('path');
path.extname('index.html').substr(1);

Update August 2019 As pointed out by @xentek in the comments; substr() is now considered a legacy function (MDN documentation). You can use substring() instead. The difference between substr() and substring() is that the second argument of substr() is the maximum length to return while the second argument of substring() is the index to stop at (without including that character). Also, substr() accepts negative start positions to be used as an offset from the end of the string while substring() does not.