delete uploaded file when user exits

[nzlyoung]

Hi,

 

I've been working for this simple project. User fills out the application form (uploads a file), redirected to the confirmation page, make a payment, redirected to the payment confirmation page and then it sends an email with this file to the customer or admin. There is no user authentication so it could be anybody uploading files.

 

The problems is that I want to delete the uploaded file when the user exits the browser or click onto some other page when the user decides to withdraw from making a payment. Because this temporary file becomes permenant. Of course you can delete the files manually using ftp but it could be a hassle for the end user.

 

I've been thinking about session_set_save_handler, register_shutdown_function or connection aborted functions but none seems to work in this situation.

 

Any suggestion?  ???

 

[trq]

Why not just delete the file after the email is sent? Otherwsie, yeah, Id'e be looking at a custom session handler.

[nzlyoung]

Yeah, the file is going to be deleted after the email is sent.

 

the thing is that after uploading file it will be redirected to the another page (to make a payment or to show the confirmation page).

 

so if the user exits the browser or decides not to proceed with the payment after uploading file, the file will just stay there... :-\ and I want to clear these temporary files...

[witakr]

I would think that a simple session handler and unlink() would work, right?

[Wildbug]

What about a crontab entry on your system that runs once a day, deleting tmp files that are older than, say, 24 hours?

 

In crontab:

find /your/dir/tmp -mtime +1 --exec rm {} \;

[nzlyoung]

Hi Wildbug,

 

Thanks for the info. The crontab is one of the solutions that will work for this situation although I don't have access to Linux. kk.

[Wildbug]

Well, along those same lines, you could write a PHP function that finds files older than a certain time and deletes them.

 

function delete_old_files($max_age_in_hours) {
// (Untested)
$files = glob("/your/dir/tmp");
foreach ($files as $file) if (3600*(time()-filemtime($file)) > $max_age_in_hours) unlink ($file);
}

// .....

delete_old_files(24); // run every time

// ...or...

if (date('G') == '16') delete_old_files(24); // run during the 4pm hour.

 

The thing is, this function doesn't need to be run when a particular user exits; it can be run for any user, and older files will be deleted.  How you might choose to decide when to run the function will vary on how busy your site is.  You could put it in the login script for a slower site so it gets run on each log in, or only run it during the 4pm hour on a busier site.

 

It's not a perfectly efficient solution, but if your options are limited, it is effective.