What is rimraf and how to use it in Node.js

The rimraf command is an alternative to the Linux command rm -rf. It allows you to do deep recursive deletion of files and folders.

Global rimraf installation

You can install rimraf globally using npm. It’s a common module, so you can install it on any operating system that supports npm. Windows, Linux, macOS - you shouldn’t have any issues here.

> npm install rimraf --global

Now you can use the command rimraf from the command line.

> rimraf ./node_modules

Such a call will delete the directory node_modules and all its content.

Using rimraf in the Node.js project

Also, you can save rimraf in your current Node.js project and use it in JavaScript code.

> npm install rimraf --save

This becomes handy when you need to delete some data that became obsolete.

import rimraf from 'rimraf';

// ...
// ...
// ...

.finally(() => {
        rimraf(`./${userIdFolder}/`, () => console.log(`DELETED ./${userIdFolder}/`));
      });

Such a call can be attached to the Promise chain and will delete users' data when the processing is over and we don’t need it anymore.

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