Is node.js rmdir recursive ? Will it work on non empty directories?

Although using a third-party library for such a thing I could not come up with a more elegant solution. So I ended up using the npm-module rimraf.

Install it

npm install rimraf

Or install it and save to 'package.json' (other save options can be found in the npm-install docs)

npm install --save rimraf

Then you can do the following:

rmdir = require('rimraf');
rmdir('some/directory/with/files', function(error){});

Or in Coffeescript:

rmdir = require 'rimraf'
rmdir 'some/directory/with/files', (error)->

I wrote about this problem exactly.

My previous solution below, while simple, is not preferred. The following function, is a Synchronous solution; while async might be preferred.

deleteFolderRecursive = function(path) {
    var files = [];
    if( fs.existsSync(path) ) {
        files = fs.readdirSync(path);
        files.forEach(function(file,index){
            var curPath = path + "/" + file;
            if(fs.lstatSync(curPath).isDirectory()) { // recurse
                deleteFolderRecursive(curPath);
            } else { // delete file
                fs.unlinkSync(curPath);
            }
        });
        fs.rmdirSync(path);
    }
};

[Edit] Added lstat instead of stat to prevent errors on symlinks

[Previous Solution]

My solution to this is quite easy to implement.

var exec = require('child_process').exec,child;
child = exec('rm -rf test',function(err,out) { 
  console.log(out); err && console.log(err); 
});

This is slimmed down for this page, but the basic idea is simple; execute 'rm -r' on the command line. If your app needs to run across different types of OS, put this in a function and have an if/else/switch to handle it.

You will want to handle all the responses; but the idea is simple enough.