appdirectory

What is appdirectory?

The appdirectory npm package is designed to help you find the appropriate directories for storing application data, configuration files, and cache files in a cross-platform manner. It abstracts away the differences between operating systems, providing a consistent API for accessing these directories.

What are appdirectory's main functionalities?

Get User Data Directory

This feature allows you to get the directory path where user-specific data should be stored. The code sample demonstrates how to create an instance of AppDirectory for an application named 'MyApp' and retrieve the user data directory.

const AppDirectory = require('appdirectory');
const dirs = new AppDirectory('MyApp');
console.log(dirs.userData());

Get User Config Directory

This feature allows you to get the directory path where user-specific configuration files should be stored. The code sample shows how to retrieve the user config directory for an application named 'MyApp'.

const AppDirectory = require('appdirectory');
const dirs = new AppDirectory('MyApp');
console.log(dirs.userConfig());

Get User Cache Directory

This feature allows you to get the directory path where user-specific cache files should be stored. The code sample demonstrates how to retrieve the user cache directory for an application named 'MyApp'.

const AppDirectory = require('appdirectory');
const dirs = new AppDirectory('MyApp');
console.log(dirs.userCache());

Get Shared Data Directory

This feature allows you to get the directory path where shared data should be stored. The code sample shows how to retrieve the shared data directory for an application named 'MyApp'.

const AppDirectory = require('appdirectory');
const dirs = new AppDirectory('MyApp');
console.log(dirs.sharedData());

Other packages similar to appdirectory

env-paths

The env-paths package provides similar functionality to appdirectory by offering paths for storing configuration, data, cache, and log files in a cross-platform manner. It is more modern and has a simpler API compared to appdirectory.

xdg-basedir

The xdg-basedir package focuses on providing paths based on the XDG Base Directory Specification, which is primarily used in Unix-like operating systems. It is more specialized compared to appdirectory, which aims to be cross-platform.

README

AppDirectory

AppDirectory is a port of Python's appdirs module. It can be used as a small cross-platform tool to find the correct directory for an application to use for persistence. It isn't perfect, but it might be useful.

Usage

AppDirectory offers one export: the AppDirectory constructor:

var AppDirectory = require('appdirectory')
var dirs = new AppDirectory('mycoolappname')

AppDirectory can be instantiated either with a single string (the application's name) or an object containing more information about the application.

var dirs = new AppDirectory({
    appName: "mycoolapp", // the app's name, kinda self-explanatory
    appAuthor: "Superman", // The author's name, or (more likely) the name of the company/organisation producing this software.
                           // Only used on Windows, if omitted will default to appName.
    appVersion: "v6000", // The version, will be appended to certain dirs to allow for distinction between versions.
                         // If it isn't present, no version parameter will appear in the paths
    useRoaming: true, // Should AppDirectory use Window's roaming directories?  (Defaults to false)
    platform: "darwin" // You should almost never need to use this, it will be automatically determined
})

Now to get some actual paths.

dirs.userData() // e.g. /home/awesomeuser/Library/Application Support/mycoolapp on Macs
dirs.userConfig() // e.g. /home/awesomeuser/.config/mycoolapp on linux etc.
dirs.userCache() // e.g. C:\Users\awesomeuser\AppData\Local\mycoolapp\mycoolapp\Cache on Windows 7 (and Vista, I believe)
dirs.userLogs() // e.g. /home/awesomeuser/.cache/mycoolapp/log

That's pretty much all there is to it.

Todo

• Fix site* functions
• Test all user* functions

Known Limitations

Note: All this limitations have been fixed by virtue of removing the site* functions. The aim is to add them back in, at which point they will still exist, as one's a design decision, and the other's unfixable as far as I can tell. However, at this point, there are no known limitations to AppDirectory! (Feel free to tell me about new limitations by filing an issue.)

• On Windows Vista, the site-config and site-data directories are hidden system directories, which may cause issues. I don't have a copy of Vista to hand to play around with how well this works, though, so YMMV.
• On unix-likes (including those with XDG-compliance), requesting the site-config and site-data directories will return just one directory, even in cases where the XDG* variables contain more than one individual path. (Specifically, it will be the first path AppDirectory finds.)