Ansible: How to delete files and folders inside a directory?

The below code only deletes the first file it gets inside the web dir. I want to remove all the files and folders inside the web directory and retain the web directory. How can I do that?

- name: remove web dir contents
    file: path='/home/mydata/web/{{ item }}' state=absent
    with_fileglob:
      - /home/mydata/web/*

Note: I've tried rm -rf using command and shell, but they don't work. Perhaps I am using them wrongly.

Any help in the right direction will be appreciated.

I am using ansible 2.1.0.0

Solution 1:

- name: Delete content & directory
  file:
    state: absent
    path: /home/mydata/web/

Note: this will delete the directory too.

Solution 2:

Using shell module (idempotent too):

- shell: /bin/rm -rf /home/mydata/web/*

If there are dot/hidden files:

- shell: /bin/rm -rf /home/mydata/web/* /home/mydata/web/.*

Cleanest solution if you don't care about creation date and owner/permissions:

- file: path=/home/mydata/web state=absent
- file: path=/home/mydata/web state=directory

Solution 3:

Remove the directory (basically a copy of https://stackoverflow.com/a/38201611/1695680), Ansible does this operation with rmtree under the hood.

- name: remove files and directories
  file:
    state: "{{ item }}"
    path: "/srv/deleteme/"
    owner: 1000  # set your owner, group, and mode accordingly
    group: 1000
    mode: '0777'
  with_items:
    - absent
    - directory

If you don't have the luxury of removing the whole directory and recreating it, you can scan it for files, (and directories), and delete them one by one. Which will take a while. You probably want to make sure you have [ssh_connection]\npipelining = True in your ansible.cfg on.

- block:
  - name: 'collect files'
    find:
      paths: "/srv/deleteme/"
      hidden: True
      recurse: True
      # file_type: any  # Added in ansible 2.3
    register: collected_files

  - name: 'collect directories'
    find:
      paths: "/srv/deleteme/"
      hidden: True
      recurse: True
      file_type: directory
    register: collected_directories

  - name: remove collected files and directories
    file:
      path: "{{ item.path }}"
      state: absent
    with_items: >
      {{
        collected_files.files
        + collected_directories.files
      }}