React Native Android: Deleting file

I'm making a gallery style app where I need to add the functionality of deleting images.

I'm using the RNFS library, specifically the unlink function. When finished the function throws no errors but it does not delete the file from my phone.

To isolate the problem, I create a new app using the AwesomeProject template and added these lines of code :

import RNFS from 'react-native-fs';
import {PermissionsAndroid} from 'react-native';

In App.tsx.

  const usEffectFunction = async () => {
    const permission = PermissionsAndroid.PERMISSIONS.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE;

    const hasPermission = await PermissionsAndroid.check(permission);
    if (!hasPermission) {
      await PermissionsAndroid.request(permission);
    }

    RNFS.unlink('/storage/emulated/0/Download/1.pdf')
      .then(() => {
        console.log('file deleted');
      })
      .catch((e: any) => console.log(e));
  };

  useEffect(() => {
    usEffectFunction();
  }, []);

In App.tsx inside the App component.

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_IMAGES"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_MEDIA_VIDEO"/>

In AndroidManifest.xml.

All this code does is ask for permission to write to storage and then delete a file in my file system.

If the path doesn't exist I get "[Error: File does not exist]" message,

If the path is correct I get "file deleted" and no error, but the file doesn't get deleted from my device, I can still find it using the Android file manager.

After some research here is the information I learned.

• The react-native-fs library does not support the new scoped storage introduced in Android 10 (API level 29) when deleting media.

• With the new storage system, you need to ask the android OS to display an activity that asks the user's permission to delete the media file using MediaStore.createDeleteRequest.

• In my research, I couldn't find any react-native module that uses the implements media deletion using MediaStore.createDeleteRequest.

I was able to solve my problem by creating my own npm package called react-native-delete-media.

It's a simple module that has a single function deletePhotos which takes an array of uris and asks the Android OS to delete it.