Question

I already have read the documentation of Node.js and, unless if I missed something, it does not tell what the parameters contain in certain operations, in particular fs.mkdir(). As you can see in the documentation, it’s not very much.

Currently, I have this code, which tries to create a folder or use an existing one instead:

fs.mkdir(path,function(e){
    if(!e || (e && e.code === 'EEXIST')){
        //do something with contents
    } else {
        //debug
        console.log(e);
    }
});

But I wonder is this the right way to do it? Is checking for the code EEXIST the right way to know that the folder already exists? I know I can do fs.stat() before making the directory, but that would already be two hits to the filesystem.

Secondly, is there a complete or at least a more detailed documentation of Node.js that contains details as to what error objects contain, what parameters signify etc.

Answer 1

Good way to do this is to use mkdirp module.

$ npm install mkdirp

Use it to run function that requires the directory. Callback is called after path is created or if path did already exists. Error err is set if mkdirp failed to create directory path.

var mkdirp = require('mkdirp');
mkdirp('/tmp/some/path/foo', function(err) { 

    // path exists unless there was an error

});