Node.js — How to Create a Directory (and Parents If Needed)

Sometimes you want to programmatically store files on your local hard drive. You may want to create a nested folder structure on the disk to organize the files. That may require you to create new directories and probably nested directories.

This tutorial shows you how to seamlessly create a directory and the parent directories on the filesystem.

Node.js Series Overview

  1. String Replace All Appearances
  2. Remove All Whitespace From a String in JavaScript
  3. Generate a Random ID or String in Node.js or JavaScript
  4. Remove Extra Spaces From a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  5. Remove Numbers From a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  6. Get the Part Before a Character in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  7. Get the Part After a Character in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  8. How to Check if a Value is a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  9. Check If a String Includes All Strings in JavaScript/Node.js/TypeScript
  10. Check if a Value is a String in JavaScript and Node.js
  11. Limit and Truncate a String to a Given Length in JavaScript and Node.js
  12. Split a String into a List of Characters in JavaScript and Node.js
  13. How to Generage a UUID in Node.js
  14. Reverse a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  15. Split a String into a List of Lines in JavaScript or Node.js
  16. Split a String into a List of Words in JavaScript or Node.js
  17. Detect if a String is in camelCase Format in Javascript or Node.js
  18. Check If a String Is in Lowercase in JavaScript or Node.js
  19. Check If a String is in Uppercase in JavaScript or Node.js
  20. Get the Part After First Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  21. Get the Part Before First Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  22. Get the Part Before Last Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  23. Get the Part After Last Occurrence in a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  24. How to Count Words in a File
  25. How to Shuffle the Characters of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  26. Append Characters or Words to a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  27. Check if a String is Empty in JavaScript or Node.js
  28. Ensure a String Ends with a Given Character in JavaScript or Node.js
  29. Left-Trim Characters Off a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  30. Right-Trim Characters Off a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  31. Lowercase the First Character of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  32. Uppercase the First Character of a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  33. Prepend Characters or Words to a String in JavaScript or Node.js
  34. Check if a String is a Number
  35. Convert a String to Buffer
  36. Prevent Line Breaks in String Template Literals
  37. How to Implement a Custom `toString` Method (Coming soon)
  38. What Is `Symbol.toStringTag` and How to Use It (Coming soon)

Create a Directory Recursively

When interacting with nested folder structures from your Node.js application, you should ensure that a given directory actually exists. In Node.js v8 and below you had to parse a given directory path and manually create every directory that doesn’t exist on the way.

Starting from Node.js v10, there’s a new option to the Fs#mkdir method: recursive. The recursive option tells Node.js to create all directories along a given path.

Please make sure you’re at least running Node.js 10.12.0 or later so that this functionality is available to you.

Here’s a sample ensureDir(path) function wrapping the recursive directory creation into a reusable utility method:

import Fs from 'fs/promises'

/**
 * Recursively create a directory at the given `path`.
 *
 * @param {String} path
 */
async function ensureDir(path) {  
  await Fs.mkdir(path, { recursive: true })
}


/**
 * Usage example: create a `storage/cache` directory in the current folder
 */
await ensureDir('./storage/cache')  

That’s it!

Use the @supercharge/fs Package

I’m the maintainer of the @supercharge/fs package providing convenient file system utilities. The @supercharge/fs package comes with a handy ensureDir(path) method creating a directory at the given path and any parent directories if they don’t exist yet:

import Fs from '@supercharge/fs'

await Fs.ensureDir('./storage/cache')  

The @supercharge/fs package uses the native Node.js Fs#mkdir method to create a directory recursively.

Enjoy!


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