What is user-home?
The 'user-home' npm package is a simple utility that provides the path to the current user's home directory. It is useful for applications that need to store or access user-specific configuration files or data.
What are user-home's main functionalities?
Get User Home Directory
This feature allows you to retrieve the path to the current user's home directory. The code sample demonstrates how to use the 'user-home' package to log the home directory path to the console.
const userHome = require('user-home');
console.log(userHome);
Other packages similar to user-home
os-homedir
The 'os-homedir' package provides similar functionality by returning the home directory of the current user. It is a lightweight alternative to 'user-home' and is part of the 'os' module in Node.js.
os
The 'os' module is a built-in Node.js module that provides operating system-related utility methods and properties. The 'os.homedir()' method can be used to get the current user's home directory, making it a direct alternative to 'user-home'.
Deprecated. Just use import {homedir} from 'os';
.
user-home
Get the path to the user home directory
Install
$ npm install user-home
Usage
const userHome = require('user-home');
console.log(userHome);
Returns null
in the unlikely scenario that the home directory can't be found.
FAQ
Why not just use the os-home
module?
This module was made long before os-homedir
. When Node.js decided to add a native method for getting the user's home directory, I made a polyfill matching its API and decided to depend on it here, so not to have duplicate code. The main reason this one is still around is that lots of modules depend on it and I see no reason to inconvenience dependents by deprecating this. This one also gets the home directory on startup and returns a string rather than exposing a method, so it's faster, and I prefer this API. Modules are cheap in Node.js, so doesn't matter. Use whichever you prefer. I'm going to continue using this one.
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