Category Archives: Powershell

Powershell: delete files older than X days

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On a recent project, I needed to delete archive folders that were older than a specified number of days. The thing that made this a little more challenging is that there were Daily, Weekly, and Monthly folders (similar to the screenshot below); each of which had a different retention period.

I found several scripts to delete folders and files older than a specified number of days, but these scripts would delete all the contents of the specified folder. I needed to be able to filter out the Daily, Weekly, or Monthly folders separately to handle their retention period.

This script is can be customized. Change the “-filter” to include the folder names that you want to delete, and change the number of days in the addDays () command.
Another really handy option is to use the -whatif option at the end of the script. This will print out in the powershell window what will be deleted, but it will not delete the files. This will let you test the delete without actually deleting the folders/files. The first delete example below includes the -whatif option so that you can see where it goes.

$thedirectory = "C:\test\ImportFolder\Archive"
# use "-whatif" to show what will be deleted without actually deleting anything
cd $thedirectory
get-childitem $thedirectory -filter "*daily*" |? {$_.psiscontainer  -and $_.lastwritetime -le (get-date).adddays(-35)} |% {remove-item $_ -force -recurse -whatif}
get-childitem $thedirectory -filter "*weekly*" |? {$_.psiscontainer  -and $_.lastwritetime -le (get-date).adddays(-15)} |% {remove-item $_ -force -recurse}
get-childitem $thedirectory -filter "*monthly*" |? {$_.psiscontainer  -and $_.lastwritetime -le (get-date).addmonths(-25)} |% {remove-item $_ -force -recurse }

This post is part of the blogging phenomenon known as TSQL Tuesday. This month’s blog party is hosted by Wayne Sheffield, who is writing a series of blog posts in the month of February all about powershell.  I couldn’t pick just 1 script to share today, so here is my second post on the topic for day.

Wait for file before processing

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As part of a recent project, I needed to check if a file existed before starting an SSIS package to import that file.  The catch was that I did not know what time time file was going to be placed on the file system.  If the SSIS package runs and the file does not exist yet, the package will fail.

You can create a script task component within SSIS to check for a file and then sleep, however several sources said that this could spike the processor so I deceded to go a different route.  To solve the problem, I wrote a quick little powershell script to check if the file exists and then wait in a loop before starting the SSIS package.

I created a SQL agent job with 2 steps.  The job runs daily at 1:00 AM. The job has a status of Executing on Step 1 until the file exists.

Step 1: powershell script to check for the file (see below)

Step 2: Execute SSIS package task.

The file that I am looking for in this example is: C:\test\ImportFolder\fileToCheck_20130212.txt
You will notice that today’s date is also appended to the end of the file name.  I built the file name out dynamically along with the current date stamp.

$dt = Get-Date -format yyyyMMdd
$path = 'C:\test\ImporFolder\'
$theFile = $path + 'fileToCheck_' + $dt +'.txt'

#  $theFile variable will contain:  C:\test\ImportFolder\fileToCheck_20130212.txt
While (1 -eq 1) {
	IF (Test-Path $theFile) {
		#file exists. break loop
		break
	}
	#sleep for 60 seconds, then check again
	Start-Sleep -s 60
}

This post is part of the blogging phenomenon known as TSQL Tuesday. This month’s blog party is hosted by Wayne Sheffield, who is writing a series of blog posts in the month of February all about powershell..