Check if a file or directory exists synchronously in Node.js
David Y.
—The Problem
How can I check synchronously if a file or directory exists in Node.js?
The 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!"); }
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