Recursively deleting a directory with files in PHP.

by Nikolaenko Maxim · Published September 20, 2012 · Updated August 27, 2020

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I often face the task of deleting a folder with all its contents, I'm tired of constantly reinventing the wheel, I found a great feature here PHP, which recursively runs through all folders, deleting files and after that the directory.

Here is the actual function:

 function RemoveDir($path)
                     {
                      if(file_exists($path) && is_dir($path))
                      {
                       $dirHandle = opendir($path);
                       while (false !== ($file = readdir($dirHandle)))
                       {
                        if ($file!='.' && $file!='..')// исключаем папки с назварием '.' и '..'
                        {
                         $tmpPath=$path.'/'.$file;
                         chmod($tmpPath, 0777);
                         if (is_dir($tmpPath))
                           {  // если папка
                          RemoveDir($tmpPath);
                            }
                           else
                           {
                            if(file_exists($tmpPath))
                          {
                           // удаляем файл
                             unlink($tmpPath);
                          }
                           }
                        }
                       }
                       closedir($dirHandle);
                       // удаляем текущую папку
                       if(file_exists($path))
                       {
                        rmdir($path);
                       }
                      }
                      else
                      {
                       echo "Удаляемой папки не существует или это файл!";
                      }
                     }

function RemoveDir($path)

{

if(file_exists($path) && is_dir($path))

{

$dirHandle = opendir($path);

while (false !== ($file = readdir($dirHandle)))

{

if ($file!='.' && $file!='..')// исключаем папки с назварием '.' и '..'

{

$tmpPath=$path.'/'.$file;

chmod($tmpPath, 0777);

if (is_dir($tmpPath))

{ // если папка

RemoveDir($tmpPath);

}

else

{

if(file_exists($tmpPath))

{

// удаляем файл

unlink($tmpPath);

}

closedir($dirHandle);

// удаляем текущую папку

if(file_exists($path))

{

rmdir($path);

}

else

{

echo "Удаляемой папки не существует или это файл!";

}

I will describe a little the logic of this function. The function receives the path to the folder as a parameter. The first thing she does is check, does this folder exist and is this folder at all if the result of the check is positive, then it opens the folder for reading and the folder reading cycle starts, get all its contents (folders, files, links) then don't forget to exclude folders '.'(point) and '..'(two points) the first is a link to this directory, the second is a link to the catalog one level higher. After that, we change the access rights to the file or directory, and if it is a folder, then go into it and delete everything in it, otherwise it is a file or a link and then we just delete it.

Function usage example:

// путь от корня сайта
$DeletedFolder='/folder';
RemoveDir($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$DeletedFolder);

// путь от корня сайта

$DeletedFolder='/folder';

RemoveDir($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$DeletedFolder);

Article source: https://slawutich.pp.ua/php/58-removedir-php.html

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Website development in PHP.