← flaviocopes.com

How to remove a file with Node.js

Published Oct 10 2018

Psssst! The 2023 WEB DEVELOPMENT BOOTCAMP is starting on FEBRUARY 01, 2023! SIGNUPS ARE NOW OPEN to this 10-weeks cohort course. Learn the fundamentals, HTML, CSS, JS, Tailwind, React, Next.js and much more! ✨

How do you remove a file from the filesytem using Node.js?

Node offers a synchronous method, and an asynchronous method through the fs built-in module.

The asynchronous one is fs.unlink().

The synchronous one is fs.unlinkSync().

The difference is simple: the synchronous call will cause your code to block and wait until the file has been removed. The asynchronous one will not block your code, and will call a callback function once the file has been deleted.

Here’s how to use those 2 functions:

fs.unlinkSync():

const fs = require('fs')

const path = './file.txt'

try {
  fs.unlinkSync(path)
  //file removed
} catch(err) {
  console.error(err)
}

fs.unlink():

const fs = require('fs')

const path = './file.txt'

fs.unlink(path, (err) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err)
    return
  }

  //file removed
})

I write books for developers 👇🏼