Exclude Directories Plugin for Nextcloud

Excludes directories and files from being added to the Nextcloud file cache.

• For files not yet in Nextcloud that match an ignored path: The files will be skipped and will not appear in Nextcloud after future file scans.
• For files already in Nextcloud that match an ignored path: The files will appear in search results, but users will be blocked from accessing them. If a user attempts to open a blocked directory, they will be blocked from creating new files under the directory. Users are also blocked from creating any file or folder that matches any of the rules.

Compatibility

Should be compatible up to Nextcloud 23.x.

Installation

From Package

1. Download a package from the Releases page of this GitHub page.
2. Expand the package using tar -xvzf nextcloud-files-excludedirs-vVERSION.tar.gz.
3. Move the expanded files_excludedirs folder into your nextcloud/apps directory, such that composer.json can be found as nextcloud/apps/files_excludedirs/composer.json.
4. Enable the "Exclude directories" plugin under the "Apps" admin page (/settings/apps).

From Source

1. Ensure that your system has Git and Composer installed.
2. Clone this repository into a new subdirectory under your nextcloud/apps directory, and name the folder files_excludedirs.
3. In the files_excludedirs subdirectory, run composer install to install required dependencies.
4. Ensure the files_excludedirs subdirectory and all its subdirectories are owned by a user that the Nextcloud user can read (e.g., if NC user is in the www-data group, the folder should be owned by root:www-data with dir permissions set to 0755 and files set to 0644).

Configuring Excluded Path Patterns

The default rule is to exclude paths that match [".snapshot"] (i.e., to exclude Btrfs snapshot folders from being indexed).

There is no settings page (yet) for this plugin, but the default rule can be overridden using the Nextcloud CLI using a command like the following:

occ config:app:set files_excludedirs exclude \
    --value '[".snapshot","anotherfolder", "pattern/*/match"]'

This will exclude:

• All folders named .snapshot.
• All folders named anotherfolder.
• Folders that match the glob pattern pattern/*/match, including pattern/xyz/match and pattern/abc/match.

Removing Unwanted Existing Files from Nextcloud File Cache

Even with this plugin enabled, neither a file scan (occ files:scan --all) nor file cleanup (occ files:cleanup) is sufficient to remove excluded paths from the file cache. Instead, you will need to remove these files from the database using SQL like the following:

DELETE FROM filecache WHERE filecache.path LIKE '%.snapshot%'

Credits

Initially authored by Roeland Jago Douma, with contributions from:

• Robin Appelman
• King
• Alan J. Pippin
• Guy Elsmore-Paddock