How to create full path with node’s fs.mkdirSync?

Update

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) => {
    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`-->`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) > -1;
      if (!caughtErr || caughtErr && 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)