Using Java nio to create a subdirectory and file

Question

I'm creating a simple program that will try to read in "conf/conf.xml" from disk, but if this file or dir doesn't exist will instead create them.

I can do this using the following code:

    // create subdirectory path
    Path confDir = Paths.get("./conf"); 

    // create file-in-subdirectory path
    Path confFile = Paths.get("./conf/conf.xml"); 

    // if the sub-directory doesn't exist then create it
    if (Files.notExists(confDir)) { 
        try { Files.createDirectory(confDir); }
        catch (Exception e ) { e.printStackTrace(); }
    }

    // if the file doesn't exist then create it
    if (Files.notExists(confFile)) {
        try { Files.createFile(confFile); }
        catch (Exception e ) { e.printStackTrace(); }
    }

My questions is if this really the most elegant way to do this? It seems superflous to need to create two Paths simple to create a new file in a new subdirectory.

Answer 1

You could declare your confFile as File instead of Path. Then you can use confFile.getParentFile().mkdirs();, see example below:

// ...

File confFile = new File("./conf/conf.xml"); 
confFile.getParentFile().mkdirs();

// ...

Or, using your code as is, you can use:

Files.createDirectories(confFile.getParent());

Answer 2

You can create directory and file in one code line:

Files.createFile(Files.createDirectories(confDir).resolve(confFile.getFileName()))

Files.createDirectories(confDir) will not throw an exception if the folder already exists and returns Path in any case.