recursively finds files by filter options from a start directory onwards and deletes only those which meet conditions you can define. useful if you want to clean up a directory in your node.js app.
you can filter by extensions, names, level in directory structure, file creation date and ignore by name, yeah!
to install find-remove, use npm:
$ npm install -S find-remove
then in your node.js app, get reference to the function like that:
const findRemove = require('find-remove')
const result = await findRemove('/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
}
var result = await findRemove('/temp', { files: 'dump.log' })
var result = await findRemove('/temp', { files: 'dump.log', dir: '*' })
var result = await findRemove('/temp', { extensions: ['.bak'], ignore: 'haumiblau.bak' })
var result = await findRemove('/dist', { dir: 'CVS' })
var result = await findRemove('/tmp', {
age: { seconds: 3600 },
extensions: '.jpg',
limit: 100
})
var result = await findRemove('/tmp', { prefix: 'filenamestartswith' })
var result = await findRemove('/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 maxLevel
option? because of performance. if you care about deep subfolders, apply that option to get a speed boost.
var result = await findRemove(rootDirectory, { dir: '*', files: '*.*' })
var result = await findRemove(rootDirectory, { files: 'example[1-3]', regex: true })
this deletes files example1.txt
, example2.txt
, and example3.txt
, but not example8.txt
.
var result = findRemove(rootDirectory, { dir: '^assets_', regex: true })
this deletes all directories that start with assets_
.
findRemove 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 and/or directories for deletion (does not delete that directory itself)- options - currently those properties are supported:
files
- can be a string or an array of files you want to delete withindir
.dir
- can be a string or an array of directories you want to delete withindir
.extensions
- this too, can be a string or an array of file extentions you want to delete withindir
.ignore
- useful to exclude some files. again, can be a string or an array of file names you do NOT want to delete withindir
age.seconds
- can be any float number. findRemove then compares it with the file stats and deletes those with modification times older thanage.seconds
limit
- can be any integer number. Will limit the number of files to be deleted at single operation to belimit
prefix
- can be any string. Will delete any files that start withprefix
.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 a JSON of files/directories it would have deleted. useful for testing.regex
- set to true to treatfiles
ordir
option strings as regular expression patterns.returnStream
- set to true to return a stream of ojects instead of an array, helpfull for high volume deletions if you want dont want to accumulate the full list in memory.
as a precaution, nothing happens when there are no options.
the unit tests are good examples on how to use the above arguments.
returns
JSON of files/directories that were deleted. For limit option - will only return number of files deleted.
- needs a rewrite
- add more filtering options (e.g. combinations)
MIT