How to force a symlink creation by overriding the existing symlink?

Question

I use the fs module to create symlinks.

fs.symlink("target", "path/to/symlink", function (e) {    if (e) { ... } }); 

If the path/to/symlink already exists, an error is sent in the callback.

How can I force symlink creation and override the existing symlink?

Is there another alternative than check error + delete existing symlink + try again?

Answer 1

When using the ln command line tool we can do this using the -f (force) flag

ln -sf target symlink-name 

However, this is not possible using the fs API unless we implement this feature in a module.

I created lnf - a module to override existing symlinks.

// Dependencies var Lnf = require("lnf");  // Create the symlink Lnf.sync("foo", __dirname + "/baz");  // Override it Lnf("bar", __dirname + "/baz", function (err) {     console.log(err || "Overriden the baz symlink."); }); 

Read the full documentation on the GitHub repository