How to get the last segment of a path or URL using 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 code I used:

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:

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

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