somewhatabstract / ancesdir

Find a specific ancestor/root directory given a starting location and a search parameter

ancesdir

Find a specific ancestor/root directory given a starting location and a search parameter

There are a few packages out there that already support finding the root directory of a project based off assumptions like that directory containing package.json or node_modules. However, this is not always the case. I needed a way to find an ancestor directory that may not always have these markers. So, this provides the means to specify a custom marker file or directory as the means to identify the ancestor that you may need.

This may be useful in a variety of situations. For example, a monorepo where you want to differentiate in development scripts between the root folder of each package, and the root folder of the entire repository.

Getting Started

yarn

yarn add ancesdir

npm

npm install ancesdir

Usage

Default

import ancesdir from "ancesdir";

console.log(ancesdir());

Outputs the absolute path of the first parent directory to the ancesdir package that contains package.json.

In most cases, this is likely all you need.

From Specific Location

import ancesdir from "ancesdir";

console.log(ancesdir(__dirname));

Outputs the absolute path of the first parent directory to __dirname that contains package.json.

Custom Target From Specific Location

import ancesdir from "ancesdir";

console.log(ancesdir(__dirname, ".mymarkerfile");

Outputs the absolute path of the first parent directory that contains a file or directory called .mymarkerfile.

This is useful if you don't have a classic file hierarchy or you want to use this for more advanced use cases where having control over the file system item that identifies your ancestor is useful.