What's the easy way to auto create non existing dir in ansible

Question

Right now, this is the only way

- name: Ensures {{project_root}}/conf dir exists
  file: path={{project_root}}/conf state=directory
- name: Copy file
  template:
    src: code.conf.j2
    dest: "{{project_root}}/conf/code.conf"

To ensure success with a full path use recurse=yes

- name: ensure custom facts directory exists
    file: >
      path=/etc/ansible/facts.d
      recurse=yes
      state=directory

If you are running Ansible >= 2.0 there is also the dirname filter you can use to extract the directory part of a path. That way you can just use one variable to hold the entire path to make sure both tasks never get out of sync.

So for example if you have playbook with dest_path defined in a variable like this you can reuse the same variable:

- name: My playbook
  vars:
    dest_path: /home/ubuntu/some_dir/some_file.txt
  tasks:

    - name: Make sure destination dir exists
      file:
        path: "{{ dest_path | dirname }}"
        state: directory

    # now this task is always save to run no matter how dest_path get's changed arround
    - name: Add file or template to remote instance
      template: 
        src: foo.txt.j2
        dest: "{{ dest_path }}"

According to the latest document when state is set to be directory, you don't need to use parameter recurse to create parent directories, file module will take care of it.

- name: create directory with parent directories
  file:
    path: /data/test/foo
    state: directory

this is fare enough to create the parent directories data and test with foo

please refer the parameter description - "state" http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/file_module.html

AFAIK, the only way this could be done is by using the state=directory option. While template module supports most of copy options, which in turn supports most file options, you can not use something like state=directory with it. Moreover, it would be quite confusing (would it mean that {{project_root}}/conf/code.conf is a directory ? or would it mean that {{project_root}}/conf/ should be created first.

So I don't think this is possible right now without adding a previous file task.

- file: 
    path: "{{project_root}}/conf"
    state: directory
    recurse: yes

you can create the folder using the following depending on your ansible version.

Latest version 2<

- name: Create Folder
  file: 
   path: "{{project_root}}/conf"
   recurse: yes
   state: directory

Older version:

- name: Create Folder
  file: 
      path="{{project_root}}/conf"
      recurse: yes
      state=directory

Refer - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/file_module.html