Solution to deleting directories

[realmadrid2727]

Hi everyone,

I've got an app that's going well, but I've encountered a little setback. For the most part, it's a simple maneuver. I want to be able to delete a directory when an entry is deleted. When someone manually deletes it, I've got this code in the controller:

def delete
  @user = User.find(session[:user_id])
  @todelete = Cpost.find(params[:id])
  @todelete.destroy
  @cpostdir = "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public/images/users/#{@user.screen_name}/#{@todelete.id}"
  FileUtils.remove_dir(@cpostdir) if File.exists?(@cpostdir)
  redirect_to :controller => 'cposts', :action => 'list'
  flash[:notice] = "Your entry has been deleted."
end

That's all well and good, it works exactly how you suspect it would. Now, what I want to do is automatically delete entries after a certain amount of time, let's say, when they're 15 days old.

This is what I've got in my app controller so far (a before filter calls the method)

def remove_old_cposts
  Cpost.destroy_all(["created_at < ?", 15.days.ago])
end

It removes all entries older than 15 days. The thing I need added is to remove the directory that corresponds to each one of those entries being deleted. If you noticed in the method I posted before, the specific directory contains the screen name of the person who posted it, and finally the ID of the post (both directories in an arbitrarity root/images/users/ dir.) So, in an entry made by the user "Tester1", the images would be placed in root/images/users/Tester1/:id/-images-go-here. And Tester2's would be in root/images/users/Tester2/:id/-images-go-here. Finally, Tester3's are in root/images/users/Tester3/:id/-images-go-here. Let's say Tester1 and Tester3's are older than 15 days, how would I go about finding the directories to those? It's easy when you're deleting one single file, since you have the Cpost ID and the session user, but not when you're destroying a bunch of stuff at once.

What's the best way to also remove those directories automatically?

Thanks in advance!

[Fenrir2]

Create an after_destroy method in the Cpost model that deletes the corresponding directory.

[Luke Redpath]

Yes, this folder deletion code does not belong in the controller, move it into your model. I'd also define a Cpost.destroy_old method on your model and call that instead of having the business rule of what constitutes an "old" post in the controller.

[realmadrid2727]

Thanks for the response, can you show me a quick example of using after_destroy? I've never used it (or even heard about it) before.

[Fenrir2]

Just define a method after_destroy in your model:

class Cpost < ...
  def after_destroy
     remove_dir(...)
  end
end

Cpost.find(4).destroy => the after_destroy method will be called here.

[realmadrid2727]

Many thanks, gents. This will work out nicely.