uid-number

What is uid-number?

The uid-number npm package is used to convert a username/group name into a numeric user id (UID) and group id (GID). It is a simple utility that can be useful when dealing with file system permissions in Node.js applications, especially when interfacing with native system file permissions where numerical IDs are required.

What are uid-number's main functionalities?

Convert username to UID

This feature allows you to convert a given username to its corresponding numeric user ID (UID). The function takes a username as its first argument and a callback as the second argument. The callback receives an error object (if any), the UID, and the GID associated with the username.

const uidNumber = require('uid-number');
uidNumber('username', (err, uid, gid) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error('Error getting UID:', err);
  } else {
    console.log('UID:', uid);
  }
});

Convert group name to GID

This feature allows you to convert a given group name to its corresponding numeric group ID (GID). The function takes a group name as its second argument and a callback as the third argument. The callback receives an error object (if any), the UID (which is undefined in this case), and the GID associated with the group name.

const uidNumber = require('uid-number');
uidNumber(undefined, 'groupname', (err, uid, gid) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error('Error getting GID:', err);
  } else {
    console.log('GID:', gid);
  }
});

Other packages similar to uid-number

posix

The posix npm package provides similar functionality to uid-number by offering methods to get user and group information based on names or IDs. It also provides additional POSIX-related utilities, making it a more comprehensive package for interacting with POSIX systems.

userid

The userid npm package is another alternative that can convert between usernames and UIDs as well as group names and GIDs. It also provides synchronous versions of these methods, which can be useful in certain scenarios where asynchronous execution is not desired.

README

Use this module to convert a username/groupname to a uid/gid number.

Usage:

npm install uid-number

Then, in your node program:

var uidNumber = require("uid-number")
uidNumber("isaacs", function (er, uid, gid) {
  // gid is null because we didn't ask for a group name
  // uid === 24561 because that's my number.
})