Delete a large number (>100K) of files with c# whilst maintaining performance in a web application?

Question

I am trying to remove a large number of files from a location (by large I mean over 100000), whereby the action is initated from a web page. Obviously I could just use

string[] files = System.IO.Directory.GetFiles("path with files to delete");
foreach (var file in files) {
    IO.File.Delete(file);
}

Directory.GetFiles http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wz42302f.aspx

This method has already been posted a few times: How to delete all files and folders in a directory? and Delete files from directory if filename contains a certain word

But the problem with this method is that if you have say a hundred thousand files it becomes a performance issue as it has to generate all of the filepaths first before looping through them.

Added to this if a web page is waiting a response from a method which is performing this as you can imagine it will look a bit rubbish!

One thought I had was to wrap this up in an an asychrnonous web service call and when it completes it fires back a response to the web page to say that they have been removed? Maybe put the delete method in a separate thread? Or maybe even use a seperate batch process to perform the delete?

I have a similar issue when trying to count the number of files in a directory - if it contains a large number of files.

I was wondering if this is all a bit overkill? I.e. is there a simpler method to deal with this? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

1. GetFiles is extremely slow.
2. If you are invoking it from a website, you might just throw a new Thread which does this trick.
3. An ASP.NET AJAX call that returns whether there are still matching files, can be used to do basic progress updates.

Below an implementation of a fast Win32 wrapping for GetFiles, use it in combination with a new Thread and an AJAX function like: GetFilesUnmanaged(@"C:\myDir", "*.txt*).GetEnumerator().MoveNext().

Usage

Thread workerThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart((MethodInvoker)(()=>
{    
     foreach(var file in GetFilesUnmanaged(@"C:\myDir", "*.txt"))
          File.Delete(file);
})));
workerThread.Start();
//just go on with your normal requests, the directory will be cleaned while the user can just surf around

---

   public static IEnumerable<string> GetFilesUnmanaged(string directory, string filter)
        {
            return new FilesFinder(Path.Combine(directory, filter))
                .Where(f => (f.Attributes & FileAttributes.Normal) == FileAttributes.Normal
                    || (f.Attributes & FileAttributes.Archive) == FileAttributes.Archive)
                .Select(s => s.FileName);
        }
    }


public class FilesEnumerator : IEnumerator<FoundFileData>
{
    #region Interop imports

    private const int ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND = 2;
    private const int ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES = 18;

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    private static extern IntPtr FindFirstFile(string lpFileName, out WIN32_FIND_DATA lpFindFileData);

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
    private static extern bool FindNextFile(SafeHandle hFindFile, out WIN32_FIND_DATA lpFindFileData);

    #endregion

    #region Data Members

    private readonly string _fileName;
    private SafeHandle _findHandle;
    private WIN32_FIND_DATA _win32FindData;

    #endregion

    public FilesEnumerator(string fileName)
    {
        _fileName = fileName;
        _findHandle = null;
        _win32FindData = new WIN32_FIND_DATA();
    }

    #region IEnumerator<FoundFileData> Members

    public FoundFileData Current
    {
        get
        {
            if (_findHandle == null)
                throw new InvalidOperationException("MoveNext() must be called first");

            return new FoundFileData(ref _win32FindData);
        }
    }

    object IEnumerator.Current
    {
        get { return Current; }
    }

    public bool MoveNext()
    {
        if (_findHandle == null)
        {
            _findHandle = new SafeFileHandle(FindFirstFile(_fileName, out _win32FindData), true);
            if (_findHandle.IsInvalid)
            {
                int lastError = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error();
                if (lastError == ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
                    return false;

                throw new Win32Exception(lastError);
            }
        }
        else
        {
            if (!FindNextFile(_findHandle, out _win32FindData))
            {
                int lastError = Marshal.GetLastWin32Error();
                if (lastError == ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES)
                    return false;

                throw new Win32Exception(lastError);
            }
        }

        return true;
    }

    public void Reset()
    {
        if (_findHandle.IsInvalid)
            return;

        _findHandle.Close();
        _findHandle.SetHandleAsInvalid();
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        _findHandle.Dispose();
    }

    #endregion
}

public class FilesFinder : IEnumerable<FoundFileData>
{
    readonly string _fileName;
    public FilesFinder(string fileName)
    {
        _fileName = fileName;
    }

    public IEnumerator<FoundFileData> GetEnumerator()
    {
        return new FilesEnumerator(_fileName);
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }
}

public class FoundFileData
{
    public string AlternateFileName;
    public FileAttributes Attributes;
    public DateTime CreationTime;
    public string FileName;
    public DateTime LastAccessTime;
    public DateTime LastWriteTime;
    public UInt64 Size;

    internal FoundFileData(ref WIN32_FIND_DATA win32FindData)
    {
        Attributes = (FileAttributes)win32FindData.dwFileAttributes;
        CreationTime = DateTime.FromFileTime((long)
                (((UInt64)win32FindData.ftCreationTime.dwHighDateTime << 32) +
                 (UInt64)win32FindData.ftCreationTime.dwLowDateTime));

        LastAccessTime = DateTime.FromFileTime((long)
                (((UInt64)win32FindData.ftLastAccessTime.dwHighDateTime << 32) +
                 (UInt64)win32FindData.ftLastAccessTime.dwLowDateTime));

        LastWriteTime = DateTime.FromFileTime((long)
                (((UInt64)win32FindData.ftLastWriteTime.dwHighDateTime << 32) +
                 (UInt64)win32FindData.ftLastWriteTime.dwLowDateTime));

        Size = ((UInt64)win32FindData.nFileSizeHigh << 32) + win32FindData.nFileSizeLow;
        FileName = win32FindData.cFileName;
        AlternateFileName = win32FindData.cAlternateFileName;
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Safely wraps handles that need to be closed via FindClose() WIN32 method (obtained by FindFirstFile())
/// </summary>
public class SafeFindFileHandle : SafeHandleZeroOrMinusOneIsInvalid
{
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    private static extern bool FindClose(SafeHandle hFindFile);

    public SafeFindFileHandle(bool ownsHandle)
        : base(ownsHandle)
    {
    }

    protected override bool ReleaseHandle()
    {
        return FindClose(this);
    }
}

// The CharSet must match the CharSet of the corresponding PInvoke signature
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
public struct WIN32_FIND_DATA
{
    public uint dwFileAttributes;
    public FILETIME ftCreationTime;
    public FILETIME ftLastAccessTime;
    public FILETIME ftLastWriteTime;
    public uint nFileSizeHigh;
    public uint nFileSizeLow;
    public uint dwReserved0;
    public uint dwReserved1;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 260)]
    public string cFileName;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 14)]
    public string cAlternateFileName;
}

Answer 2

Can you put all your files in the same directory?

If so, why don't you just call Directory.Delete(string,bool) on the subdir you want to delete?

If you've already got a list of file paths you want to get rid of, you might actually get better results by moving them to a temp dir then deleting them rather than deleting each file manually.

Cheers, Florian