Knowing when a file was created from looking at its meta information or stat
can be handy whenever you are want to automate removing files or using logic that only makes a program create a file if another file was not since a particular date.
Node.js fs
module contains a function that can be used to retreive file meta information. It´s called stat
and returns this object, containing the ctime
property which indicates when the file was created:
{ dev: 2269, mode: 33188, nlink: 1, uid: 1000, gid: 1000, rdev: 0, blksize: 4096, ino: 271, size: 0, blocks: 0, atimeMs: 1582871562365.894, mtimeMs: 1582871556897.5554, ctimeMs: 1582871556897.5554, birthtimeMs: 1582871556897.5554, atime: 2021-01-28T06:32:42.366Z, mtime: 2021-01-28T06:32:36.898Z, ctime: 2021-01-28T06:32:36.898Z, birthtime: 2021-01-28T06:32:36.898Z }
Using a helper funcion to solve this can be a good practice if you need it in multiple places.
this is my code 412
You can also use the fs.stat
function to retrieve the date when a file was created or detecting file size.