How to programmatically get the location where npm installs global modules

Question

I want to programmatically find out the folder where npm installs global modules. This question is similar, but the answer doesn't work for globally installed modules: How to get details of npm installed modules programatically?

Answer 1

From the nodejs website:

globally - This drops modules in {prefix}/lib/node_modules, and puts executable files in {prefix}/bin, where {prefix} is usually something like /usr/local. It also installs man pages in {prefix}/share/man, if they’re supplied.

To get the prefix enter:

npm config get prefix

Edit:

To do it from node use the npm npm module. Something like this will work:

var npm = require("npm")
var myConfigObject = {}
npm.load(myConfigObject, function (er) {
    if (er) return handleError(er)
    console.log(npm.get('prefix'));
})

Answer 2

If you don't want to depend on npm:

const { resolve } = require('path')    
const globalPath = resolve(process.execPath, '../../lib/node_modules')