How do you get a list of the names of all files present in a directory in Node.js?

Question

I'm trying to get a list of the names of all the files present in a directory using Node.js. I want output that is an array of filenames. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use the fs.readdir or fs.readdirSync methods. fs is included in Node.js core, so there's no need to install anything.

fs.readdir

const testFolder = './tests/';
const fs = require('fs');

fs.readdir(testFolder, (err, files) => {
  files.forEach(file => {
    console.log(file);
  });
});

fs.readdirSync

const testFolder = './tests/';
const fs = require('fs');

fs.readdirSync(testFolder).forEach(file => {
  console.log(file);
});

The difference between the two methods, is that the first one is asynchronous, so you have to provide a callback function that will be executed when the read process ends.

The second is synchronous, it will return the file name array, but it will stop any further execution of your code until the read process ends.

Answer 2

IMO the most convenient way to do such tasks is to use a glob tool. Here's a glob package for node.js. Install with

npm install glob

Then use wild card to match filenames (example taken from package's website)

var glob = require("glob")

// options is optional
glob("**/*.js", options, function (er, files) {
  // files is an array of filenames.
  // If the `nonull` option is set, and nothing
  // was found, then files is ["**/*.js"]
  // er is an error object or null.
})

If you are planning on using globby here is an example to look for any xml files that are under current folder

import globby = require('globby');

const paths = await globby("**/*.xml");  

Answer 3

The answer above does not perform a recursive search into the directory though. Here's what I did for a recursive search (using node-walk: npm install walk)

var walk    = require('walk');
var files   = [];

// Walker options
var walker  = walk.walk('./test', { followLinks: false });

walker.on('file', function(root, stat, next) {
    // Add this file to the list of files
    files.push(root + '/' + stat.name);
    next();
});

walker.on('end', function() {
    console.log(files);
});

Answer 4

Get files in all subdirs

const fs=require('fs');

function getFiles (dir, files_){
    files_ = files_ || [];
    var files = fs.readdirSync(dir);
    for (var i in files){
        var name = dir + '/' + files[i];
        if (fs.statSync(name).isDirectory()){
            getFiles(name, files_);
        } else {
            files_.push(name);
        }
    }
    return files_;
}

console.log(getFiles('path/to/dir'))

Answer 5

Here's a simple solution using only the native fs and path modules:

// sync version
function walkSync(currentDirPath, callback) {
    var fs = require('fs'),
        path = require('path');
    fs.readdirSync(currentDirPath).forEach(function (name) {
        var filePath = path.join(currentDirPath, name);
        var stat = fs.statSync(filePath);
        if (stat.isFile()) {
            callback(filePath, stat);
        } else if (stat.isDirectory()) {
            walkSync(filePath, callback);
        }
    });
}

or async version (uses fs.readdir instead):

// async version with basic error handling
function walk(currentDirPath, callback) {
    var fs = require('fs'),
        path = require('path');
    fs.readdir(currentDirPath, function (err, files) {
        if (err) {
            throw new Error(err);
        }
        files.forEach(function (name) {
            var filePath = path.join(currentDirPath, name);
            var stat = fs.statSync(filePath);
            if (stat.isFile()) {
                callback(filePath, stat);
            } else if (stat.isDirectory()) {
                walk(filePath, callback);
            }
        });
    });
}

Then you just call (for sync version):

walkSync('path/to/root/dir', function(filePath, stat) {
    // do something with "filePath"...
});

or async version:

walk('path/to/root/dir', function(filePath, stat) {
    // do something with "filePath"...
});

The difference is in how node blocks while performing the IO. Given that the API above is the same, you could just use the async version to ensure maximum performance.

However there is one advantage to using the synchronous version. It is easier to execute some code as soon as the walk is done, as in the next statement after the walk. With the async version, you would need some extra way of knowing when you are done. Perhaps creating a map of all paths first, then enumerating them. For simple build/util scripts (vs high performance web servers) you could use the sync version without causing any damage.

Answer 6

As of Node v10.10.0, it is possible to use the new withFileTypes option for fs.readdir and fs.readdirSync in combination with the dirent.isDirectory() function to filter for filenames in a directory. That looks like this:

fs.readdirSync('./dirpath', {withFileTypes: true})
.filter(item => !item.isDirectory())
.map(item => item.name)

The returned array is in the form:

['file1.txt', 'file2.txt', 'file3.txt']

Docs for the fs.Dirent class

Answer 7

Using Promises with ES7

Asynchronous use with mz/fs

The mz module provides promisified versions of the core node library. Using them is simple. First install the library...

npm install mz

Then...

const fs = require('mz/fs');
fs.readdir('./myDir').then(listing => console.log(listing))
  .catch(err => console.error(err));

Alternatively you can write them in asynchronous functions in ES7:

async function myReaddir () {
  try {
    const file = await fs.readdir('./myDir/');
  }
  catch (err) { console.error( err ) }
};

Update for recursive listing

Some of the users have specified a desire to see a recursive listing (though not in the question)... Use fs-promise. It's a thin wrapper around mz.

npm install fs-promise;

then...

const fs = require('fs-promise');
fs.walk('./myDir').then(
    listing => listing.forEach(file => console.log(file.path))
).catch(err => console.error(err));

Answer 8

non-recursive version

You don't say you want to do it recursively so I assume you only need direct children of the directory.

Sample code:

const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');

fs.readdirSync('your-directory-path')
  .filter((file) => fs.lstatSync(path.join(folder, file)).isFile());

Answer 9

Dependencies.

var fs = require('fs');
var path = require('path');

Definition.

// String -> [String]
function fileList(dir) {
  return fs.readdirSync(dir).reduce(function(list, file) {
    var name = path.join(dir, file);
    var isDir = fs.statSync(name).isDirectory();
    return list.concat(isDir ? fileList(name) : [name]);
  }, []);
}

Usage.

var DIR = '/usr/local/bin';

// 1. List all files in DIR
fileList(DIR);
// => ['/usr/local/bin/babel', '/usr/local/bin/bower', ...]

// 2. List all file names in DIR
fileList(DIR).map((file) => file.split(path.sep).slice(-1)[0]);
// => ['babel', 'bower', ...]

Please note that fileList is way too optimistic. For anything serious, add some error handling.

Answer 10

I'm assuming from your question that you don't want directories names, just files.

Directory Structure Example

animals
├── all.jpg
├── mammals
│   └── cat.jpg
│   └── dog.jpg
└── insects
    └── bee.jpg

Walk function

Credits go to Justin Maier in this gist

If you want just an array of the files paths use return_object: false:

const fs = require('fs').promises;
const path = require('path');

async function walk(dir) {
    let files = await fs.readdir(dir);
    files = await Promise.all(files.map(async file => {
        const filePath = path.join(dir, file);
        const stats = await fs.stat(filePath);
        if (stats.isDirectory()) return walk(filePath);
        else if(stats.isFile()) return filePath;
    }));

    return files.reduce((all, folderContents) => all.concat(folderContents), []);
}

Usage

async function main() {
   console.log(await walk('animals'))
}

Output

[
  "/animals/all.jpg",
  "/animals/mammals/cat.jpg",
  "/animals/mammals/dog.jpg",
  "/animals/insects/bee.jpg"
];

Answer 11

if someone still search for this, i do this:

import fs from 'fs';
import path from 'path';

const getAllFiles = dir =>
    fs.readdirSync(dir).reduce((files, file) => {
        const name = path.join(dir, file);
        const isDirectory = fs.statSync(name).isDirectory();
        return isDirectory ? [...files, ...getAllFiles(name)] : [...files, name];
    }, []);

and its work very good for me

Answer 12

Load fs:

const fs = require('fs');

Read files async:

fs.readdir('./dir', function (err, files) {
    // "files" is an Array with files names
});

Read files sync:

var files = fs.readdirSync('./dir');

Answer 13

Get sorted filenames. You can filter results based on a specific extension such as '.txt', '.jpg' and so on.

import * as fs from 'fs';
import * as Path from 'path';

function getFilenames(path, extension) {
    return fs
        .readdirSync(path)
        .filter(
            item =>
                fs.statSync(Path.join(path, item)).isFile() &&
                (extension === undefined || Path.extname(item) === extension)
        )
        .sort();
}

Answer 14

Out of the box

In case you want an object with the directory structure out-of-the-box I highly reccomend you to check directory-tree.

Lets say you have this structure:

photos
│   june
│   └── windsurf.jpg
└── january
    ├── ski.png
    └── snowboard.jpg

const dirTree = require("directory-tree");
const tree = dirTree("/path/to/photos");

Will return:

{
  path: "photos",
  name: "photos",
  size: 600,
  type: "directory",
  children: [
    {
      path: "photos/june",
      name: "june",
      size: 400,
      type: "directory",
      children: [
        {
          path: "photos/june/windsurf.jpg",
          name: "windsurf.jpg",
          size: 400,
          type: "file",
          extension: ".jpg"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      path: "photos/january",
      name: "january",
      size: 200,
      type: "directory",
      children: [
        {
          path: "photos/january/ski.png",
          name: "ski.png",
          size: 100,
          type: "file",
          extension: ".png"
        },
        {
          path: "photos/january/snowboard.jpg",
          name: "snowboard.jpg",
          size: 100,
          type: "file",
          extension: ".jpg"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Custom Object

Otherwise if you want to create an directory tree object with your custom settings have a look at the following snippet. A live example is visible on this codesandbox.

// my-script.js
const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");

const isDirectory = filePath => fs.statSync(filePath).isDirectory();
const isFile = filePath => fs.statSync(filePath).isFile();

const getDirectoryDetails = filePath => {
  const dirs = fs.readdirSync(filePath);
  return {
    dirs: dirs.filter(name => isDirectory(path.join(filePath, name))),
    files: dirs.filter(name => isFile(path.join(filePath, name)))
  };
};

const getFilesRecursively = (parentPath, currentFolder) => {
  const currentFolderPath = path.join(parentPath, currentFolder);
  let currentDirectoryDetails = getDirectoryDetails(currentFolderPath);

  const final = {
    current_dir: currentFolder,
    dirs: currentDirectoryDetails.dirs.map(dir =>
      getFilesRecursively(currentFolderPath, dir)
    ),
    files: currentDirectoryDetails.files
  };

  return final;
};

const getAllFiles = relativePath => {
  const fullPath = path.join(__dirname, relativePath);
  const parentDirectoryPath = path.dirname(fullPath);
  const leafDirectory = path.basename(fullPath);

  const allFiles = getFilesRecursively(parentDirectoryPath, leafDirectory);
  return allFiles;
};

module.exports = { getAllFiles };

Then you can simply do:

// another-file.js 

const { getAllFiles } = require("path/to/my-script");

const allFiles = getAllFiles("/path/to/my-directory");

Answer 15

Here's an asynchronous recursive version.

    function ( path, callback){
     // the callback gets ( err, files) where files is an array of file names
     if( typeof callback !== 'function' ) return
     var
      result = []
      , files = [ path.replace( /\/\s*$/, '' ) ]
     function traverseFiles (){
      if( files.length ) {
       var name = files.shift()
       fs.stat(name, function( err, stats){
        if( err ){
         if( err.errno == 34 ) traverseFiles()
    // in case there's broken symbolic links or a bad path
    // skip file instead of sending error
         else callback(err)
        }
        else if ( stats.isDirectory() ) fs.readdir( name, function( err, files2 ){
         if( err ) callback(err)
         else {
          files = files2
           .map( function( file ){ return name + '/' + file } )
           .concat( files )
          traverseFiles()
         }
        })
        else{
         result.push(name)
         traverseFiles()
        }
       })
      }
      else callback( null, result )
     }
     traverseFiles()
    }

Answer 16

Took the general approach of @Hunan-Rostomyan, made it a litle more concise and added excludeDirs argument. It'd be trivial to extend with includeDirs, just follow same pattern:

import * as fs from 'fs';
import * as path from 'path';

function fileList(dir, excludeDirs?) {
    return fs.readdirSync(dir).reduce(function (list, file) {
        const name = path.join(dir, file);
        if (fs.statSync(name).isDirectory()) {
            if (excludeDirs && excludeDirs.length) {
                excludeDirs = excludeDirs.map(d => path.normalize(d));
                const idx = name.indexOf(path.sep);
                const directory = name.slice(0, idx === -1 ? name.length : idx);
                if (excludeDirs.indexOf(directory) !== -1)
                    return list;
            }
            return list.concat(fileList(name, excludeDirs));
        }
        return list.concat([name]);
    }, []);
}

Example usage:

console.log(fileList('.', ['node_modules', 'typings', 'bower_components']));

Answer 17

This is a TypeScript, optionally recursive, optionally error logging and asynchronous solution. You can specify a regular expression for the file names you want to find.

I used fs-extra, because its an easy super set improvement on fs.

import * as FsExtra from 'fs-extra'

/**
 * Finds files in the folder that match filePattern, optionally passing back errors .
 * If folderDepth isn't specified, only the first level is searched. Otherwise anything up
 * to Infinity is supported.
 *
 * @static
 * @param {string} folder The folder to start in.
 * @param {string} [filePattern='.*'] A regular expression of the files you want to find.
 * @param {(Error[] | undefined)} [errors=undefined]
 * @param {number} [folderDepth=0]
 * @returns {Promise<string[]>}
 * @memberof FileHelper
 */
public static async findFiles(
    folder: string,
    filePattern: string = '.*',
    errors: Error[] | undefined = undefined,
    folderDepth: number = 0
): Promise<string[]> {
    const results: string[] = []

    // Get all files from the folder
    let items = await FsExtra.readdir(folder).catch(error => {
        if (errors) {
            errors.push(error) // Save errors if we wish (e.g. folder perms issues)
        }

        return results
    })

    // Go through to the required depth and no further
    folderDepth = folderDepth - 1

    // Loop through the results, possibly recurse
    for (const item of items) {
        try {
            const fullPath = Path.join(folder, item)

            if (
                FsExtra.statSync(fullPath).isDirectory() &&
                folderDepth > -1)
            ) {
                // Its a folder, recursively get the child folders' files
                results.push(
                    ...(await FileHelper.findFiles(fullPath, filePattern, errors, folderDepth))
                )
            } else {
                // Filter by the file name pattern, if there is one
                if (filePattern === '.*' || item.search(new RegExp(filePattern, 'i')) > -1) {
                    results.push(fullPath)
                }
            }
        } catch (error) {
            if (errors) {
                errors.push(error) // Save errors if we wish
            }
        }
    }

    return results
}

Answer 18

My 2 cents if someone:

Just want to list file names (excluding directories) from a local sub-folder on their project

• ✅ No additional dependencies
• ✅ 1 function
• ✅ Normalize path (Unix vs. Windows)

const fs = require("fs");
const path = require("path");

/**
 * @param {string} relativeName "resources/foo/goo"
 * @return {string[]}
 */
const listFileNames = (relativeName) => {
  try {
    const folderPath = path.join(process.cwd(), ...relativeName.split("/"));
    return fs
      .readdirSync(folderPath, { withFileTypes: true })
      .filter((dirent) => dirent.isFile())
      .map((dirent) => dirent.name.split(".")[0]);
  } catch (err) {
    // ...
  }
};

README.md
package.json
resources
 |-- countries
    |-- usa.yaml
    |-- japan.yaml
    |-- gb.yaml
    |-- provinces
       |-- .........


listFileNames("resources/countries") #=> ["usa", "japan", "gb"]

Answer 19

Just a heads up: if you're planning to perform operations on each file in a directory, try vinyl-fs (which is used by gulp, the streaming build system).

Answer 20

This will work and store the result in test.txt file which will be present in the same directory

  fs.readdirSync(__dirname).forEach(file => {
    fs.appendFileSync("test.txt", file+"\n", function(err){
    })
})

Answer 21

I've recently built a tool for this that does just this... It fetches a directory asynchronously and returns a list of items. You can either get directories, files or both, with folders being first. You can also paginate the data in case where you don't want to fetch the entire folder.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/fs-browser

This is the link, hope it helps someone!

Answer 22

I made a node module to automate this task: mddir

Usage

node mddir "../relative/path/"

To install: npm install mddir -g

To generate markdown for current directory: mddir

To generate for any absolute path: mddir /absolute/path

To generate for a relative path: mddir ~/Documents/whatever.

The md file gets generated in your working directory.

Currently ignores node_modules, and .git folders.

Troubleshooting

If you receive the error 'node\r: No such file or directory', the issue is that your operating system uses different line endings and mddir can't parse them without you explicitly setting the line ending style to Unix. This usually affects Windows, but also some versions of Linux. Setting line endings to Unix style has to be performed within the mddir npm global bin folder.

Line endings fix

Get npm bin folder path with:

npm config get prefix

Cd into that folder

brew install dos2unix

dos2unix lib/node_modules/mddir/src/mddir.js

This converts line endings to Unix instead of Dos

Then run as normal with: node mddir "../relative/path/".

Example generated markdown file structure 'directoryList.md'

    |-- .bowerrc
    |-- .jshintrc
    |-- .jshintrc2
    |-- Gruntfile.js
    |-- README.md
    |-- bower.json
    |-- karma.conf.js
    |-- package.json
    |-- app
        |-- app.js
        |-- db.js
        |-- directoryList.md
        |-- index.html
        |-- mddir.js
        |-- routing.js
        |-- server.js
        |-- _api
            |-- api.groups.js
            |-- api.posts.js
            |-- api.users.js
            |-- api.widgets.js
        |-- _components
            |-- directives
                |-- directives.module.js
                |-- vendor
                    |-- directive.draganddrop.js
            |-- helpers
                |-- helpers.module.js
                |-- proprietary
                    |-- factory.actionDispatcher.js
            |-- services
                |-- services.cardTemplates.js
                |-- services.cards.js
                |-- services.groups.js
                |-- services.posts.js
                |-- services.users.js
                |-- services.widgets.js
        |-- _mocks
            |-- mocks.groups.js
            |-- mocks.posts.js
            |-- mocks.users.js
            |-- mocks.widgets.js

Answer 23

Use npm list-contents module. It reads the contents and sub-contents of the given directory and returns the list of files' and folders' paths.

const list = require('list-contents');

list("./dist",(o)=>{
  if(o.error) throw o.error;
   console.log('Folders: ', o.dirs);
   console.log('Files: ', o.files);
});

Answer 24

I usually use: FS-Extra.

const fileNameArray = Fse.readdir('/some/path');

Result:

[
  "b7c8a93c-45b3-4de8-b9b5-a0bf28fb986e.jpg",
  "daeb1c5b-809f-4434-8fd9-410140789933.jpg"
]

Answer 25

If many of the above options seem too complex or not what you are looking for here is another approach using node-dir - https://github.com/fshost/node-dir

npm install node-dir

Here is a somple function to list all .xml files searching in subdirectories

import * as nDir from 'node-dir' ;

listXMLs(rootFolderPath) {
    let xmlFiles ;

    nDir.files(rootFolderPath, function(err, items) {
        xmlFiles = items.filter(i => {
            return path.extname(i) === '.xml' ;
        }) ;
        console.log(xmlFiles) ;       
    });
}

Answer 26

function getFilesRecursiveSync(dir, fileList, optionalFilterFunction) {
    if (!fileList) {
        grunt.log.error("Variable 'fileList' is undefined or NULL.");
        return;
    }
    var files = fs.readdirSync(dir);
    for (var i in files) {
        if (!files.hasOwnProperty(i)) continue;
        var name = dir + '/' + files[i];
        if (fs.statSync(name).isDirectory()) {
            getFilesRecursiveSync(name, fileList, optionalFilterFunction);
        } else {
            if (optionalFilterFunction && optionalFilterFunction(name) !== true)
                continue;
            fileList.push(name);
        }
    }
}