How to convert local file path to a file::?/ url safely in node.js?
I have local file paths (in node.js) and I need to convert them into file:// urls.
I’m now looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_URI_scheme and I feel this must be a solved problem and somebody must have a snippet or npm module to do this.
But then I try to search npm for this but I get so much cruft it is not funny (file, url and path are a search hit in like every package ever 🙂 Same with google and SO.
I can do this naïve approach
site = path.resolve(site);
if (path.sep === '\\') {
site = site.split(path.sep).join("https://stackoverflow.com/");
}
if (!/^file:\/\//g.test(site)) {
site="file:///" + site;
}
But I’m pretty sure that is not the way to go.
Node.js v10.12.0 just got two new methods to solve this issue:
const url = require('url');
url.fileURLToPath(url)
url.pathToFileURL(path)
Documentation
Use the file-url module.
npm install --save file-url
Usage:
var fileUrl = require('file-url');
fileUrl('unicorn.jpg');
//=> file:///Users/sindresorhus/dev/file-url/unicorn.jpg
fileUrl('/Users/pony/pics/unicorn.jpg');
//=> file:///Users/pony/pics/unicorn.jpg
Also works in Windows. And the code is simple enough, in case you want to just take a snippet:
var path = require('path');
function fileUrl(str) {
if (typeof str !== 'string') {
throw new Error('Expected a string');
}
var pathName = path.resolve(str).replace(/\\/g, "https://stackoverflow.com/");
// Windows drive letter must be prefixed with a slash
if (pathName[0] !== "https://stackoverflow.com/") {
pathName="https://stackoverflow.com/" + pathName;
}
return encodeURI('file://' + pathName);
};
I had a similar issue, but the solution ended up being to use the new WHATWG URL implementation:
const path="c:\\Users\\myname\\test.swf";
const u = new URL(`file:///${path}`).href;
// u = 'file:///c:/Users/myname/test.swf'
