Is it possible to Remove Directory with some contents using pysftp module?

Question

I am creating a backup script using pysftp module. I am able to upload and download files. When i am trying to Delete a directory with some contents i got an exception.

This is what i tried

con = pysftp.Connection('192.168.0.40',username='root',password='clado123')
con.chdir('/root/backup')
con.pwd
con.listdir()
['data', 'test']
data - directory is not empty.
test - directory is empty.
con.rmdir('test')
con.listdir()
['data']
con.rmdir('data')

OSError: Failure

Can any one suggest me a way to solve this problem?

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered May 24 '17 at 07:27

8

I have find out a way. There is method called 'execute' in the pysftp connection object. We can execute commands on remote server using this method.

con.execute('rm -rf /root/backup/data')
con.listdir()
[]

answered May 24 '17 at 07:27

Fuji Komalan

1,979
16
25

RubenLaguna · Answer 2 · 2023-08-10T05:53:29.273

Other solutions are dependent on the SFTP server operating system. For example, con.execute('rm xxxx') won't work if the SFTP server is a windows implementation.

For a pysftp only approach to delete non-empty directories, you can use con.walktree to recursively delete all regular files while building a list of subdirectories to delete after the files.

You can't directly delete the directories from walktree since it visits the deeper levels last, and you need the opposite.

After the walktree runs you can iterate (in reverse) over the list of directories and rmdir each one.

Note that in the code below fcallback=con.remove so walktree will call remove(remotepath) for each file recursively.

On the other hand, dcallback=dirs.append so for each directory will execute dirs.append(directory_remote_path) , effectively building the list of directories to delete.

import os
import pysftp


sftp_host = os.environ[ 'SFTP_HOST' ]
sftp_username = os.environ[ 'SFTP_USERNAME' ]
sftp_password = os.environ[ 'SFTP_PASSWORD' ]

con = pysftp.Connection(sftp_host, username=sftp_username, password=sftp_password)

dirs = ['/root/backup/data']
con.walktree(dirs[0], fcallback=con.remove, dcallback=dirs.append, ucallback=con.remove, recurse=True)

print(dirs)

for d in reversed(dirs):
    print("Delete directory", d)
    con.rmdir(d)
    
con.close()

This is a very elegant solution which is not dependent on platform (while the accepted answer is platform dependent). It works well in my tests. — mp035, Sep 08 '22 at 09:49

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 24 '17 at 07:12

1

rmdir(remotepath) found at the documenation http://pysftp.readthedocs.io/en/release_0.2.8/pysftp.html#pysftp.Connection.rmdir

answered May 24 '17 at 07:12

Stavros Avramidis

857
9
20

I have already tried that. rmdir is perfectly working on empty directories, but it is failing on directories with some contents. – Fuji Komalan May 24 '17 at 07:16
You coud remove every object in the dir first,althought it's not the best solution because your directory might include other directories in it – Stavros Avramidis May 24 '17 at 07:18
got a method > con.execute('rm -rf /root/backup/data') < @Stavros Avramidis – Fuji Komalan May 24 '17 at 07:27

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 02 '18 at 10:43

remove all the files from directory and then use rmdir to remove empty directory. Works for me.

def clean_dir(sftp, dir, files):
    assert sftp.isdir(str(dir)), "Outbox does not exist!"
    assert files.is_dir(), "Source directory does not exist!"
    for capsule in list(files.iterdir()):
        target = dir / capsule.name
        assert sftp.exists(str(target)), "Target files does not exist!"
        sftp.remove(str(target))
        assert not sftp.exists(str(target)), "Removed file still exists!"

Is it possible to Remove Directory with some contents using pysftp module?

4 Answers4