safe-wipe

safe-wipe

Safely wipe a folder.

Overview

This is the perfect library for when you want to wipe a folder with user's confirmation.

• If the folder is empty (or contains only useless files like .DS_Store or Thumbs.db as configured with config.ignore), the folder will be removed without asking anything.
• If config.force is set to true, wipe anyway.
• If the session is not interactive, raise an exception.
• Prompt the user for confirmation, and raise an exception if the answer is negative.

Note: This library requires Node.js v8.0.0 or higher as it uses native JavaScript promises and util.promisify.

You can configure the following variables:

Name	Description	Default
stdin, stdout, stderr	Streams to use for I/O.	process.* streams
ignore	An array of files to ignore when checking if a directory is empty.	.DS_Store and Thumbs.db
parent	A (supposed) parent directory of the directory to wipe. If the parent is contained in the directory to wipe, the process will be aborted in all cases.
interactive	Whether the session is interactive.	true
force	Whether to force the wipe if the folder is not empty.	false
silent	The error messages are not printed if this is set to true.	false
messages	An object of messages for user prompt and error display.

The messages are:

Name	Description
contained	Error message when the folder to wipe is contained in the configured parent folder.
confirm	Text to prompt the user to confirm the (not empty) directory wipe.
abort	Error message when the user refuses to wipe the folder.

The function is asynchronous and returns a promise. Nothing is passed to the success function, but you'll get an Error instance in the error function. It can have the following code property:

Code	Description
CONTAINED	Refused to remove the directory since it's containing the supposed parent.
ABORT	The user aborted the operation (or we're not in an interactive session and config.force is false).

Examples

Simple usage

var safeWipe = require('safe-wipe');

safeWipe('directory', {
  parent: __dirname,
  messages: {
    abort: 'Nope.',
  },
}).then(function () {
  console.log('Successfully removed!');
}, function (e) {
  console.error(e.message, e.code);
});

Bind a config object

var mySafeWipe = safeWipe({
  interactive: false,
});

mySafeWipe('some-directory').then(function () {
  // ...
});

mySafeWipe('another-directory', {
  force: true,
});

Changelog

[0.3.0] - 2025-03-05

Changed

BREAKING

• Migrate to native Promises and remove Q dependency [#8] Now requires Node >= 8.