find-delete

recursively finds files by filter options from a start directory onwards and deletes these. useful if you want to clean up a directory in your node.js app.

you can filter by extensions, names, level in directory structure and file creation date yeah!

installation

to install find-delete, use npm:

$ npm install find-remove

then in your node.js app, get reference to the function like that:

var findRemoveSync = require('find-remove');

quick examples

delete all *.bak and *.log files within the /temp/ directory

var result = findRemoveSync('/temp', {extensions: ['.bak', '.log']});

the return value result is a json object with successfully deleted files. if you output result to the console, you will get something like this:

{
    '/tmp/haumiblau.bak': true,
    '/tmp/dump.log': true 
}

delete all files called 'dump.log' within the /temp/ directory and any of its subfolders

var result = findRemoveSync(rootDirectory, {files: 'dump.log'});

same as above but do not delete file 'haumiblau.bak'

var result = findRemoveSync(rootDirectory, {files: 'dump.log', ignore: 'haumiblau.bak'});

delete recursively all files called 'dump.log' AND also all files with the extension '.dmp' within /temp/

var result = findRemoveSync('/tmp', {files: 'dump.log', extension: '.dmp'});

delete everything inside AND including the /temp directory

just call it without options because no options means nothing is filtered.

var result = findRemoveSync('/tmp');

delete all jpg files older than one hour

var result = findRemoveSync('/tmp', {age: {seconds: 3600}, extensions: '.jpg'});

apply filter options only for two levels inside the /temp directory

var result = findRemoveSync('/tmp', {maxLevel: 2, extensions: '.tmp'});

this deletes any .tmp files up to two levels, for example: /tmp/level1/level2/a.tmp

but not: /tmp/level1/level2/level3/b.tmp

why the heck do we have this option? because of performance. if you do not care about deep subfolders, apply that option to get a speed boost.

api

findRemoveSync(dir, options)

findRemoveSync takes any start directory and searches files from there for removal. the selection of files for removal depends on the given options. and at last, it deletes the selected files/directories.

arguments

• dir - any directory to search for files for deletion
• options - currently two properties are supported:
  • files - can be a string or an array of files you want to delete within dir. also *.* is allowed here if you want to remove all files (but not directories).
  • extensions - this too, can be a string or an array of file extenstions you want to delete within dir
  • ignore - useful to exclude some files. again, can be a string or an array of file names you do NOT want to delete within dir
  • age.seconds - can be any float number. findRemoveSync then compares it with the file stats and deletes those with creation times older than age.seconds
  • maxLevel - advanced: limits filtering to a certain level. useful for performance. recommended for crawling huge directory trees.
  • test - advanced: set to true for a test run, meaning it does not delete anything but returns an array of files/directories it would have deleted.

when no options are given, are undefined or null, then everything including directories are removed as if there were no filters. this also applies when only the maxLevel parameter is given.

returns

associative array of files/directories that were deleted.

todo

• add more filtering options (combinations, regex, etc.)
• have an asynchronous solution
• use streams instead

license

MIT