Check if a file or directory exists synchronously in Node.js

David Y.

—March 15, 2024

The ProblemThe Problem

How can I check synchronously if a file or directory exists in Node.js?

The SolutionThe Solution

The function fs.existsSync() can be used to synchronously check if a file or directory exists. The asynchronous version of this function, fs.exists(), is deprecated, but fs.existsSync() will still work.

Example usage:

const fs = require("fs");

if (fs.existsSync("/tmp/myfile")) {
  console.log("/tmp/myfile exists!");
} else {
  console.log("/tmp/myfile does not exist!");
}

Note that this function will return True if myfile is a file or a directory, as long as it exists. We can use fs.lstatSync() on the path to retrieve an fs.Stats object containing information about the path. This object has an isDirectory() method we can use:

const fs = require("fs");

if (fs.existsSync("/tmp/myfile")) {
  console.log("/tmp/myfile exists!");

  if (fs.lstatSync("/tmp/myfile").isDirectory()) {
    console.log("/tmp/myfile is a directory!");
  } else {
    console.log("/tmp/myfile is a file!");
  }
} else {
  console.log("/tmp/myfile does not exist!");
}