Configurable Recursive Purge and Retain Data Tool

In this article we'll discuss and demonstrate a very helpful tool for doing a recursive search through directories from a given root directory and all of its children. In this case, the application will decide whether a file should be deleted or retained. It can, through a property file, have different retention policies (i.e. number of days old for a given a path). At the end of this article, there is a link from which you can clone the repository and freely use and modify.

Configurable HIerachrical Retention and Purge Data Tool (chirpd)

This tool consists of:

• A Bash script - This executes the java jar: chirp-data-tool.jar
• Three Java Classes - The java classes are the main part of this tool

The three Java Classes include:

• ChirpData - This class is the main class and handles the major processing
• ChirpDataLogger - Handles logging messages
• ChirpDataException - The throwable Exception class

Now will explain the flow of this tool:

The chirpd command (bash script) validates the passed arguments and if valiation passes, it calls the chirp-data-tool.jar. If it fails it echos a message as to why it failed. When it succeeds, it executes the

java

command as:

java -jar /usr/local/bin/chirp-data-tool.jar "$command" "$rootpath" "$daysold" "$excludedfilenames" "$considerweekends" "$propertyfile" "$logfile" "$talkativeness"

The biggest part of this application with only one line of code! is: Collection files = FileUtils.listFiles(rootPathFile, null, true);

FileUtils

is a part of the

org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils

package.

Two other way the command runs is help mode

chirpd -h

which prints the help and

chirpd -v

which prints the command version.

For more information regarding this tool and to use it, download the code.

Hope you find this useful!

Cheers!