Fetching metadata

Reading directory listings, fetching permissions, and getting the time of creation and modification. These are all essential pieces of the filesystem tool kit.

fs and POSIX
Most of the fs module methods are light wrappers around POSIX operations (with shims for Windows), so many of the concepts and names should be similar if we've indulged in any system programming or even shell scripting.

In this recipe, we're going to write a CLI tool that supplies in-depth information about files and directories for a given path.

Getting ready

To get started, let's create a new folder called fetching-meta-data, containing a file called meta.js:

$ mkdir fetching-meta-data 
$ cd fetching-meta-data 
$ touch meta...