A Python script for tidying directories. Files older than a given age are moved to an archive directory. Separately, old files in the archive are deleted.
Usage:
tidydirectory --directory=<dir> --archive-directory=<dir> --archive-age=<days> --delete-age=<days> --mapping-file=<file> [--dry-run] [--verbose]
Options:
-h --help Show this screen.
--directory=<dir> The directory to organize.
--archive-directory=<dir> The directory to archive files to.
--archive-age=<days> The age of files to archive (in days).
--delete-age=<days> The age of files to delete (in days).
--mapping-file=<file> YAML file containing the mapping of file extensions to categories.
--verbose Enable verbose logging.
--dry-run Perform a dry run without making any changes.Expand the next section for an example.
Here is a more complete example using a test directory:
$ bash ./make-test-dir.sh
Removing existing test directory...
Creating new test directory...
Adding new files...
Adding old files...
Adding archived files...
Adding expired files...$ tree test-dir
test-dir
├── archive
│ ├── data
│ │ ├── archived-data.csv
│ │ └── expired-data.csv
│ ├── directories
│ │ ├── archived-directory
│ │ │ └── archived-directory.file
│ │ └── expired-directory
│ │ └── expired-directory.file
│ ├── documents
│ │ ├── archived-document.txt
│ │ └── expired-document.txt
│ ├── images
│ │ ├── archived-image.jpg
│ │ └── expired-image.txt
│ └── other
│ ├── archived-other.unknown
│ └── expired-other.unknown
├── new-data.csv
├── new-directory
│ └── new-directory.file
├── new-document.txt
├── new-image.jpg
├── new-other.unknown
├── old-data.csv
├── old-directory
│ └── old-directory.file
├── old-document.txt
├── old-image.jpg
└── old-other.unknown$ python tidydirectory.py --directory test-dir --archive-directory test-dir/archive --archive-age 7 --delete-age 30 --mapping-file file-mapping.yml
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Tidying: 'test-dir', Archive age: 7 days
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Archive: 'test-dir/archive', Delete age: 30 days
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Moved 'test-dir/old-other.unknown' -> 'test-dir/archive/other/old-other.unknown'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Moved 'test-dir/old-directory' -> 'test-dir/archive/directories/old-directory'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Moved 'test-dir/old-data.csv' -> 'test-dir/archive/data/old-data.csv'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Moved 'test-dir/old-document.txt' -> 'test-dir/archive/documents/old-document.txt'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Moved 'test-dir/old-image.jpg' -> 'test-dir/archive/images/old-image.jpg'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Deleted 'test-dir/archive/images/expired-image.txt'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Deleted 'test-dir/archive/other/expired-other.unknown'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Deleted directory: test-dir/archive/directories/expired-directory
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Deleted 'test-dir/archive/documents/expired-document.txt'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Deleted 'test-dir/archive/data/expired-data.csv'
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Archived 4 files and 1 directories
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Deleted 5 files/directories from the archive
2024-06-14 15:38:52 INFO: Done!$ tree test-dir
test-dir
├── archive
│ ├── data
│ │ ├── archived-data.csv
│ │ └── old-data.csv
│ ├── directories
│ │ ├── archived-directory
│ │ │ └── archived-directory.file
│ │ └── old-directory
│ │ └── old-directory.file
│ ├── documents
│ │ ├── archived-document.txt
│ │ └── old-document.txt
│ ├── images
│ │ ├── archived-image.jpg
│ │ └── old-image.jpg
│ └── other
│ ├── archived-other.unknown
│ └── old-other.unknown
├── new-data.csv
├── new-directory
│ └── new-directory.file
├── new-document.txt
├── new-image.jpg
└── new-other.unknownEverything starting with old- has been moved to the archive and everything starting with expired- has been deleted from the archive but those starting wth new- remain untouched in the main directory and those starting with archived- remain in the archive.
The main motivation for this script was to automatically keep a downloads folder organised.
This can be done by creating a script similar to run-tidydirectory.sh and then scheduling it to run using Cron.
For example, this would run the script every day at 03:00:
0 3 * * * /path/to/mamba run -n tidydirectory /path/to/tidydirectory/run-tidydirectory.shThe example command runs the script in a conda environment (see environment.yml) but if you don't want to do that you can ignore the mamba -r -n tidydirectory part.