Does anyone know how to delete files on the server recursively? I need to develop a script that can delete files older than a specified amount of time (say 1 month) and recursively traverse all folders from the current folder (where the script is located) down.

Thanks in advance,

Don Blaylock
CF Savant

Hello Don,

You can use the <CFDirectory> and <CFFile> tag to perform this task. the code may look something like this:

<!--- this will get the list of files and directories in the rootdir folder --->
<cfdirectory directory="C:/websites/rootdir" name="qry_folder" action="LIST">

<!--- store the directory names in an array --->
<cfset dir_array=arraynew(1)>
<cfset i=1>
<cfloop query="qry_folder">
<cfif qry_folder.type EQ "dir">
<cfset dir_array[i]=qry_folder.name>
<cfset i = i + 1>
<!--- if it is a file and has not been modofied in a month use CFFile to delete it --->
<cfleseif qry_folder.type EQ "file" and qry_folder.dateLastModified LT amonthago>
<cffile action="delete" file="C:/websites/rootdir/#qry_folder.name#">
</cfif>
</cfloop>

<!--- Now that you have the array of directory names you can do the same thing as above for each directory --->

You can find more information on these tags at these links:
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/coldfusion/6.1/htmldocs/tags-a20.htm#wp1097918

http://livedocs.macromedia.com/coldfusion/6.1/htmldocs/tags-p27.htm#wp1098395

Good Luck

An alternative, if you're CF service is running under an account with proper permissions is to use <cfexecute> and call rmdir /q /s as a command line.

<cfexecute name="rmdir.exe" arguments"/q /s c:\mydir" timeout=30 variable="result"/>

Sidenote: Unfortunately due to security reasons, CFExecute is a disabled tag on all of our shared servers, and I doubt this setting can ever change.