How to delete all files in directory on remote SFTP server in Python?

Cuga picture Cuga · Aug 4, 2010 · Viewed 27.4k times · Source

I'd like to delete all the files in a given directory on a remote server that I'm already connected to using Paramiko. I cannot explicitly give the file names, though, because these will vary depending on which version of file I had previously put there.

Here's what I'm trying to do... the line below the #TODO is the call I'm trying where remoteArtifactPath is something like /opt/foo/*

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.load_host_keys(os.path.expanduser(os.path.join("~", ".ssh", "known_hosts")))
ssh.connect(server, username=username, pkey=mykey)
sftp = ssh.open_sftp()

# TODO: Need to somehow delete all files in remoteArtifactPath remotely
sftp.remove(remoteArtifactPath+"*")

# Close to end
sftp.close()
ssh.close()

Any idea how I can achieve this?

Answer

Cuga picture Cuga · Aug 4, 2010

I found a solution: Iterate over all the files in the remote location, then call remove on each of them:

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.load_host_keys(os.path.expanduser(os.path.join("~", ".ssh", "known_hosts")))
ssh.connect(server, username=username, pkey=mykey)
sftp = ssh.open_sftp()

# Updated code below:
filesInRemoteArtifacts = sftp.listdir(path=remoteArtifactPath)
for file in filesInRemoteArtifacts:
    sftp.remove(remoteArtifactPath+file)

# Close to end
sftp.close()
ssh.close()