How do I recursively delete a directory and its entire contents (files + sub dirs) in PHP? [duplicate]

Question

The user-contributed section in the manual page of rmdir contains a decent implementation:

 function rrmdir($dir) { 
   if (is_dir($dir)) { 
     $objects = scandir($dir);
     foreach ($objects as $object) { 
       if ($object != "." && $object != "..") { 
         if (is_dir($dir. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .$object) && !is_link($dir."/".$object))
           rrmdir($dir. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .$object);
         else
           unlink($dir. DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR .$object); 
       } 
     }
     rmdir($dir); 
   } 
 }

Building on The Pixel Developer's comment, a snippet using the SPL might look like:

$files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(
    new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($dir, RecursiveDirectoryIterator::SKIP_DOTS),
    RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST
);

foreach ($files as $fileinfo) {
    $todo = ($fileinfo->isDir() ? 'rmdir' : 'unlink');
    $todo($fileinfo->getRealPath());
}

rmdir($dir);

^{Note: It does no sanity checking and makes use of the SKIP_DOTS flag introduced with the FilesystemIterator in PHP 5.3.0. Of course, the $todo could be an if/else. The important point is that CHILD_FIRST is used to iterate over the children (files) first before their parent (folders).}

Deletes all files and folders in the path.

function recurseRmdir($dir) {
  $files = array_diff(scandir($dir), array('.','..'));
  foreach ($files as $file) {
    (is_dir("$dir/$file")) ? recurseRmdir("$dir/$file") : unlink("$dir/$file");
  }
  return rmdir($dir);
}

For *nix you can use a shell_exec for rm -R or DEL /S folder_name for Windows.

There is another thread with more examples here: A recursive remove directory function for PHP?

If you are using Yii then you can leave it to the framework:

CFileHelper::removeDirectory($my_directory);

<?php

use RecursiveDirectoryIterator;
use RecursiveIteratorIterator;
use SplFileInfo;

# http://stackoverflow.com/a/3352564/283851
# https://gist.github.com/XzaR90/48c6b615be12fa765898

# Forked from https://gist.github.com/mindplay-dk/a4aad91f5a4f1283a5e2

/**
 * Recursively delete a directory and all of it's contents - e.g.the equivalent of `rm -r` on the command-line.
 * Consistent with `rmdir()` and `unlink()`, an E_WARNING level error will be generated on failure.
 *
 * @param string $source absolute path to directory or file to delete.
 * @param bool   $removeOnlyChildren set to true will only remove content inside directory.
 *
 * @return bool true on success; false on failure
 */
function rrmdir($source, $removeOnlyChildren = false)
{
    if(empty($source) || file_exists($source) === false)
    {
        return false;
    }

    if(is_file($source) || is_link($source))
    {
        return unlink($source);
    }

    $files = new RecursiveIteratorIterator
    (
        new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($source, RecursiveDirectoryIterator::SKIP_DOTS),
        RecursiveIteratorIterator::CHILD_FIRST
    );

    //$fileinfo as SplFileInfo
    foreach($files as $fileinfo)
    {
        if($fileinfo->isDir())
        {
            if(rrmdir($fileinfo->getRealPath()) === false)
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            if(unlink($fileinfo->getRealPath()) === false)
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    if($removeOnlyChildren === false)
    {
        return rmdir($source);
    }

    return true;
}

Using DirectoryIterator and recursion correctly:

function deleteFilesThenSelf($folder) {
    foreach(new DirectoryIterator($folder) as $f) {
        if($f->isDot()) continue; // skip . and ..
        if ($f->isFile()) {
            unlink($f->getPathname());
        } else if($f->isDir()) {
            deleteFilesThenSelf($f->getPathname());
        }
    }
    rmdir($folder);
}