How to remove a directory synchronously using Node.js?

April 14, 2021 - 1 min read

To remove a directory or a folder, we can use the rmdirSync() method from the fs (filesystem) module Node.js. This will synchronously remove the directory.

// Remove directory synchronously
fs.rmdirSync("./FilesDirectory", { recursive: true });

console.log("Successfully deleted directory!");

For exampe let's consider a directory called FilesDirectory like this,

// require fs module
const fs = require("fs");

// path
const path = "./FilesDirectory";

Now let's use the fs.rmdirSync() function and

  • pass the path as the first argument
  • optional options object with a property of recursive set to boolean true as the second argument. This is done so that any files or directories inside the directory are also deleted. If you don't want a directory with files not to be deleted, you can remove the options object completely.

to the function like this,

// require fs module
const fs = require("fs");

// path
const path = "./FilesDirectory";

// remove directory by passing path
// as the first argument to the function
fs.rmdirSync(path, { recursive: true });

console.log("Successfully deleted directory!");

See this example live in repl.it.

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