Accessing Command Line Arguments in Node.js

When launching Node.js programs like node server.js folder, arguments can be passed as shown in the Node.js usage documentation: $ node -h.

How to Access Arguments in JavaScript

Node.js provides access to command line arguments through the process.argv array. The first element is always 'node', the second is the script file name, and the subsequent elements contain the arguments:

// Print the command line arguments
process.argv.forEach(function (val, index, array) {
  console.log(index   ': '   val);
});

Example

Consider the following command: $ node process-2.js one two=three four.

The process.argv array for this command would be:

[ 'node',
  '/Users/mjr/work/node/process-2.js',
  'one',
  'two=three',
  'four' ]

Note: