How To Fix "__dirname is not defined" Error in Node.js

In CommonJS mode, __dirname is a variable that contains the current file's directory. Many Node.js projects rely on this variable, but you can't use __dirname in ESM mode. You have two options:

1. Disable ESM mode and use CommonJS instead, or
2. Polyfill __dirname

Disable ESM Mode

While ESM is likely the future of JavaScript imports, ESM comes with friction, and there's nothing wrong with avoiding ESM for now. To disable ESM, you need to remove the following line from your package.json file:

{ "type": "module" }

Or, if your JavaScript files end in .mjs, you need to rename them to .js.

Polyfill __dirname

In ESM mode, import.meta.url contains the URL (file path prefixed with file://) to the current JavaScript file. In order to convert the file URL into the directory path, you need to:

1. Convert the file URL into a file path using Node's fileURLToPath()
2. Remove the file part of the file path, leaving you with just the current directory.

The following code gets you the correct __dirname.

import path from 'path';
import { fileURLToPath } from 'url';

const __dirname = path.dirname(fileURLToPath(import.meta.url));

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