How to create full path with node s fs mkdirSync

Question

I m trying to create a full path if it doesn t exist   The code looks like this   var fs   require  fs    if   fs existsSync newDest   fs mkdirSync newDest      This code works great as long as there is only one subdirectory  a newDest like  dir1   however when there is a directory path like   dir1 dir2   it fails with  Error  ENOENT  no such file or directory  I d like to be able to create the full path with as few lines of code as necessary   I read there is a recursive option on fs and tried it like this  var fs   require  fs    if   fs existsSync newDest   fs mkdirSync newDest  0777   true     I feel like it should be that simple to recursively create a directory that doesn t exist  Am I missing something or do I need to parse the path and check each directory and create it if it doesn t already exist   I m pretty new to Node  Maybe I m using an old version of FS

User · Answer

I had issues with the recursive option of fs.mkdir so I made a function that does the following:

Creates a list of all directories, starting with the final target dir and working up to the root parent.
Creates a new list of needed directories for the mkdir function to work

Makes each directory needed, including the final

function createDirectoryIfNotExistsRecursive(dirname) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
       const fs = require('fs');

       var slash = '/';

       // backward slashes for windows
       if(require('os').platform() === 'win32') {
          slash = '\\';
       }
       // initialize directories with final directory
       var directories_backwards = [dirname];
       var minimize_dir = dirname;
       while (minimize_dir = minimize_dir.substring(0, minimize_dir.lastIndexOf(slash))) {
          directories_backwards.push(minimize_dir);
       }

       var directories_needed = [];

       //stop on first directory found
       for(const d in directories_backwards) {
          if(!(fs.existsSync(directories_backwards[d]))) {
             directories_needed.push(directories_backwards[d]);
          } else {
             break;
          }
       }

       //no directories missing
       if(!directories_needed.length) {
          return resolve();
       }

       // make all directories in ascending order
       var directories_forwards = directories_needed.reverse();

       for(const d in directories_forwards) {
          fs.mkdirSync(directories_forwards[d]);
       }

       return resolve();
    });
 }

User · Answer

A more robust answer is to use use mkdirp   var mkdirp   require  mkdirp     mkdirp   path to dir   function  err        if  err  console error err      else console log  dir created         Then proceed to write the file into the full path with   fs writeFile    path to dir file dat

User · Answer

I solved the problem this way - similar to other recursive answers but to me this is much easier to understand and read  const path   require  path    const fs   require  fs     function mkdirRecurse inputPath      if  fs existsSync inputPath         return        const basePath   path dirname inputPath     if  fs existsSync basePath         fs mkdirSync inputPath         mkdirRecurse basePath

User · Answer

Edit  NodeJS version 10 12 0 has added a native support for both mkdir and mkdirSync to create a directory recursively with recursive  true option as the following   fs mkdirSync targetDir    recursive  true       And if you prefer fs Promises API  you can write  fs promises mkdir targetDir    recursive  true       Original Answer  Create directories recursively if they do not exist   Zero dependencies   const fs   require  fs    const path   require  path     function mkDirByPathSync targetDir    isRelativeToScript   false             const sep   path sep    const initDir   path isAbsolute targetDir    sep         const baseDir   isRelativeToScript     dirname           return targetDir split sep  reduce  parentDir  childDir    gt        const curDir   path resolve baseDir  parentDir  childDir       try         fs mkdirSync curDir         catch  err          if  err code      EEXIST        curDir already exists          return curDir                    To avoid  EISDIR  error on Mac and  EACCES -- gt  ENOENT  and  EPERM  on Windows        if  err code      ENOENT        Throw the original parentDir error on curDir  ENOENT  failure          throw new Error  EACCES  permission denied  mkdir    parentDir                     const caughtErr     EACCES    EPERM    EISDIR   indexOf err code   gt  -1        if   caughtErr    caughtErr  amp  amp  curDir     path resolve targetDir             throw err     Throw if it s just the last created dir                     return curDir       initDir       Usage     Default  make directories relative to current working directory  mkDirByPathSync  path to dir        Make directories relative to the current script  mkDirByPathSync  path to dir    isRelativeToScript  true        Make directories with an absolute path  mkDirByPathSync   path to dir      Demo  Try It   Explanations    UPDATE  This solution handles platform-specific errors like EISDIR for Mac and EPERM and EACCES for Windows  Thanks to all the reporting comments by  PediT    JohnQ   deed02392   robyoder and  Almenon  This solution handles both relative and absolute paths  Thanks to  john comment  In the case of relative paths  target directories will be created  resolved  in the current working directory  To Resolve them relative to the current script dir  pass  isRelativeToScript  true   Using path sep and path resolve    not just   concatenation  to avoid cross-platform issues  Using fs mkdirSync and handling the error with try catch if thrown to handle race conditions  another process may add the file between the calls to fs existsSync   and fs mkdirSync   and causes an exception    The other way to achieve that could be checking if a file exists then creating it  I e  if   fs existsSync curDir  fs mkdirSync curDir    But this is an anti-pattern that leaves the code vulnerable to race conditions  Thanks to  GershomMaes comment about the directory existence check   Requires Node v6 and newer to support destructuring   If you have problems implementing this solution with old Node versions  just leave me a comment

User · Answer

fs-extra adds file system methods that aren t included in the native fs module  It is a drop in replacement for fs   Install fs-extra    npm install --save fs-extra  const fs   require  fs-extra       Make sure the output directory is there  fs ensureDirSync newDest     There are sync and async options   https   github com jprichardson node-fs-extra blob master docs ensureDir md

User · Answer

One option is to use shelljs module  npm install shelljs  var shell   require  shelljs    shell mkdir  -p   fullPath     From that page      Available options       p  full path  will create intermediate dirs if necessary    As others have noted  there s other more focused modules   But  outside of mkdirp  it has tons of other useful shell operations  like which  grep etc     and it works on windows and  nix

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Example for Windows  no extra dependencies and error handling   const path   require  path    const fs   require  fs     let dir    C   temp  dir1  dir2  dir3    function createDirRecursively dir        if   fs existsSync dir                     createDirRecursively path join dir                  fs mkdirSync dir            createDirRecursively dir     creates dir1 dir2 dir3 in C  temp

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This version works better on Windows than the top answer because it understands both   and path sep so that forward slashes work on Windows as they should  Supports absolute and relative paths  relative to the process cwd           Creates a folder and if necessary  parent folders also  Returns true    if any folders were created  Understands both     and path sep as     path separators  Doesn t try to create folders that already exist     which could cause a permissions error  Gracefully handles the race     condition if two processes are creating a folder  Throws on error      param targetDir Name of folder to create     export function mkdirSyncRecursive targetDir      if   fs existsSync targetDir         for  var i   targetDir length-2  i  gt   0  i--          if  targetDir charAt i            targetDir charAt i     path sep            mkdirSyncRecursive targetDir slice 0  i            break                    try         fs mkdirSync targetDir         return true        catch  err          if  err code      EEXIST   throw err              return false

User · Answer

i know this is an old question  but nodejs v10 12 0 now supports this natively with the recursive option set to true  fs mkdir     Creates  tmp a apple  regardless of whether   tmp  and  tmp a exist  fs mkdir   tmp a apple     recursive  true     err    gt      if  err  throw err

User · Answer

You can use the next function  const recursiveUpload    path  string           const paths   path split       const fullPath   paths reduce  accumulator  current    gt      fs mkdirSync accumulator    return    accumulator    current           fs mkdirSync fullPath     return fullPath     So what it does    Create paths variable  where it stores every path by itself as an element of the array  Adds     at the end of each element in the array  Makes for the cycle    Creates a directory from the concatenation of array elements which indexes are from 0 to current iteration  Basically  it is recursive     Hope that helps   By the way  in Node v10 12 0 you can use recursive path creation by giving it as the additional argument    fs mkdir   tmp a apple     recursive  true     err    gt      if  err  throw err        https   nodejs org api fs html fs fs mkdirsync path options

User · Answer

Here s my imperative version of mkdirp for nodejs   function mkdirSyncP location        let normalizedPath   path normalize location       let parsedPathObj   path parse normalizedPath       let curDir   parsedPathObj root      let folders   parsedPathObj dir split path sep       folders push parsedPathObj base       for let part of folders            curDir   path join curDir  part           if   fs existsSync curDir                 fs mkdirSync curDir

User · Answer

Using reduce we can verify if each path exists and create it if necessary  also this way I think it is easier to follow  Edited  thanks  Arvin  we should use path sep to get the proper platform-specific path segment separator   const path   require  path        Path separators could change depending on the platform const pathToCreate    path to dir    pathToCreate   split path sep    reduce  prevPath  folder    gt       const currentPath   path join prevPath  folder  path sep      if   fs existsSync currentPath         fs mkdirSync currentPath           return currentPath

User · Answer

Too many answers  but here s a solution without recursion that works by splitting the path and then left-to-right building it back up again  function mkdirRecursiveSync path        let paths   path split path delimiter       let fullPath           paths forEach  path    gt             if  fullPath                       fullPath   path            else               fullPath   fullPath         path                     if   fs existsSync fullPath                 fs mkdirSync fullPath                          For those concerned about windows vs Linux compatibility  simply replace the forward slash with double backslash     in both occurrence above but TBH we are talking about node fs not windows command line and the former is pretty forgiving and the above code will simply work on Windows and is more a complete solution cross platform

User · Answer

You can simply check folder exist or not in path recursively and make the folder as you check if they are not present   NO EXTERNAL LIBRARY   function checkAndCreateDestinationPath  fileDestination        const dirPath   fileDestination split           dirPath forEach  element  index    gt            if  fs existsSync dirPath slice 0  index   1  join                     fs mkdirSync dirPath slice 0  index   1  join

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Based on mouneer s zero-dependencies answer  here s a slightly more beginner friendly Typescript variant  as a module   import   as fs from  fs   import   as path from  path          Recursively creates directories until  targetDir  is valid     param targetDir target directory path to be created recursively     param isRelative is the provided  targetDir  a relative path     export function mkdirRecursiveSync targetDir  string  isRelative   false        const sep   path sep      const initDir   path isAbsolute targetDir    sep           const baseDir   isRelative     dirname             targetDir split sep  reduce  prevDirPath  dirToCreate    gt            const curDirPathToCreate   path resolve baseDir  prevDirPath  dirToCreate           try               fs mkdirSync curDirPathToCreate             catch  err                if  err code      EEXIST                     throw err                               caught EEXIST error if curDirPathToCreate already existed  not a problem for us                      return curDirPathToCreate     becomes prevDirPath on next call to reduce        initDir

User · Answer

How about this approach    if   fs existsSync pathToFile                 var dirName                   var filePathSplit   pathToFile split                   for  var index   0  index  lt  filePathSplit length  index                      dirName    filePathSplit index                       if   fs existsSync dirName                       fs mkdirSync dirName                             This works for relative path

User · Answer

Now with NodeJS    10 12 0  you can use fs mkdirSync path    recursive  true    fs mkdirSync

User · Answer

Exec can be messy on windows  There is a more  nodie  solution  Fundamentally  you have a recursive call to see if a directory exists and dive into the child  if it does exist  or create it  Here is a function that will create the children and call a function when finished   fs   require  fs    makedirs   function path  func     var pth   path replace         g         var els   pth split        var all         function insertOne        var el   els splice 0  1  0      if   fs existsSync all   el         fs mkdirSync all   el           all    el           if  els length    0        func         else        insertOne

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An asynchronous way to create directories recursively   import fs from  fs   const mkdirRecursive   function path  callback      let controlledPaths        let paths   path split             Put each path in an array     filter      p   gt  p           Skip root path indicator         reduce  memo  item    gt           Previous item prepended to each item so we preserve realpaths     const prevItem   memo length  gt  0   memo join      replace       g                   controlledPaths push      prevItem item      return     memo       prevItem item           map dir   gt        fs mkdir dir  err   gt          if  err  amp  amp  err code     EEXIST   throw err          Delete created directory  or skipped  from controlledPath       controlledPaths splice controlledPaths indexOf dir   1        if  controlledPaths length     0            return callback                             Usage mkdirRecursive    photos recent        gt      console log  Directories created succesfully

User · Answer

const fs   require  fs     try       fs mkdirSync path    recursive  true       catch  error           this make script keep running  even when folder already exist     console log error

User · Answer

This feature has been added to node js in version 10 12 0  so it s as easy as passing an option  recursive  true  as second argument to the fs mkdir   call  See the example in the official docs   No need for external modules or your own implementation

User · Answer

As clean as this     function makedir fullpath      let destination split   fullpath replace            split         let path builder   destination split 0      each destination split  function  i  path segment        if  i  lt  1  return true     path builder           path segment     if   fs existsSync path builder           fs mkdirSync path builder

[node.js] How to create full path with node's fs.mkdirSync?

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