path-sanitizer

A simple leightweight node.js package for sanitizing paths to prevent Path Traversal

Usage

const sanitize = require('path-sanitizer')

console.log(sanitize('path/to/file.txt'))

Or here is a more complex example:

const sanitize = require('../sanitize')
const path = require('path')

// Real scenario:
function routeHandler (myPath) {
    // Lets just assume that the path was extracted from the request
    // We want to read a file in the C:\Users\user\Desktop\myApp\ directory
    // But the user should be able to access C:\Users\user\Desktop\
    // So we need to sanitize the path

    const APP_DIR = 'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\myApp\\'
    const sanitized = path.join(APP_DIR, sanitize(myPath))

    // Now we would usally read the file
    // But in this case we just gonna print the path
    console.log(sanitized)
}

routeHandler('myvideo.mp4') // Just fine...
routeHandler('../../Documents/grades.docx') // But what if we try to access a file outside the app directory?
routeHandler('/hello.txt') // What if the path starts with a slash, and we try to use an absolute path?
routeHandler('////////a\\\\../hhuio.txt') // What if the path is not valid?
routeHandler(500) // What if the path is not a string?
routeHandler('/:11^^') // What if the path contains not allowed characters (like ":")?