# Get the last segment of a path or URL in JavaScript

> Learn how to get the last segment of a path or URL in JavaScript using substring() together with lastIndexOf('/') + 1, wrapped in a small reusable function.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2020-05-28 | Topics: [JavaScript](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/js/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/how-to-get-last-item-path-javascript/

While working on a project, I had the need to get the last segment of a path.

In this case it was a filesystem path, but this would work also for URLs.

This is the [JavaScript](https://flaviocopes.com/javascript/) code I used:

```js
const lastItem = thePath.substring(thePath.lastIndexOf('/') + 1)
```

How does this work?

The `thePath` string contains a path. Like `/Users/Flavio/Desktop`, for example.

We identify the index of the last `/` in the path, calling `lastIndexOf('/')` on the `thePath` string.

Then we pass that to the `substring()` method we call on the same `thePath` string.

This will return a new string that starts from the position of the last `/`, + 1 (otherwise we'd also get the `/` back).

Finally, we assign that string to `lastItem`.

You can make a simple function for it, too: 

```js
const getLastItem = thePath => thePath.substring(thePath.lastIndexOf('/') + 1)

getLastItem('/Users')
getLastItem('/Users/Flavio')
getLastItem('/Users/Flavio/test.jpg')
getLastItem('https://flavicopes.com/test')
```

![JavaScript code showing getLastItem function execution with four examples and their output results](https://flaviocopes.com/images/how-to-get-last-item-path-javascript/Screen_Shot_2020-05-27_at_18.41.52.jpg)