I'm new to NodeJS and this I can't get this code to work. I want to delete the file inside stuff first, then delete the file itself.
What am I doing wrong please?
var fs = require("fs");
fs.unlink('./stuff/writeMe.txt', () => {
fs.rmdir('stuff');
});
Calling asynchronous functions like fs.unlink and fs.rmdir in Node starts a task. You pass them a function as an argument – a callback – that gets called when that task completes. The callback has an argument that tells you whether the operation completed successfully.
You’re already making use of this partially by only calling fs.rmdir when fs.unlink has completed. Now you need to say what to do when fs.unlink has completed (even if it’s nothing), and start checking for errors.
An example of something you can do when there’s an error is throw that error, which prints it and exits the process.
fs.unlink('stuff/writeMe.txt', (err) => {
if (err) throw err;
fs.rmdir('stuff', (err) => {
if (err) throw err;
});
});
throw err inside a plain asynchronous callback. It does NOTHING useful. Show an example of real error handling. I know the node.js doc shows it this way and it's teaching a whole generation of newbies the wrong way to write error handling. A throw into a plain asynchronous callback goes nowhere useful where you can catch it (it goes back into the asynchronous innards of the fs library in this case).
.catch(err => { process.nextTick(() => { throw err; }); }).)I would recommend using the new promises interface for the fs module withg async/await as it makes it easier to sequence asynchronous operations without nesting. It also makes error handling much simpler:
const fsp = require("fs").promises;
async function someFunction() {
try {
await fsp.unlink('./stuff/writeMe.txt');
await fsp.rmdir('./stuff');
} catch(e) {
// got an error, handle it here
console.log(e);
}
}
async functions return a promise so the caller has to use either await or .then() to know when they are done or retrieve a completion value.unlink of a temp file. But I do get this error when calling the async version without the callback param.() => {} if you really want to ignore errors, but you have to pass the callback.You can use rimraf package (recursive delete). Otherwise is this the only file in directory?
