How to get the last updated date of a file using Node.js

Discover how to retrieve the last updated date of a file with Node.js

All the file functions in Node.js are provided by the fs module. This module exposes a method called statSync(), which gets the file details synchronously.

By calling it passing a file path (relative to the file location, or absolute), it will return an object that contains the mtime property.

That is a Date object instance that contains the file last modified date.

const fs = require('fs')

const getFileUpdatedDate = (path) => {
  const stats = fs.statSync(path)
  return stats.mtime
}

Check out the JavaScript Date guide to find out more how to handle the Date object, if you need.