Deleting a download directory

[Lassie]

I have a shopping cart  application that stores a customers purchases in a specific directory made available for download via clicking on a link.

I would like to destroy the directory ( and purchases) within once a customer has made the download.

Could anyone suggest in principle, how to approach this. For example can the directory be set by a timescale to self destruct or can a download of a file be detected to trigger such an event.

 

 

[Wildbug]

See glob(), unlink(), and rmdir().  Also see filemtime() for checking if a file is old enough to qualify for deletion.

 

You can put a file/directory deletion routine in one of your scripts to be run every time the script is run or only at certain times.  If you want to go outside of PHP, you can write a script to do so and set it via cron.  You can even write a daemon to sit around and check for old files and delete them.

[Lassie]

I will look into those. Thanks

What is cron?

[Wildbug]

On what OS are you running this?  cron is the scheduling daemon on Unix/Linux/etc.  That means you can set a script or program to execute at pre-determined periods, i.e., once a week, twice a day, on Friday, etc.  There are similar solutions available for Windows, but I am not familiar with them.  You'll probably have to have a little access to the system in order to use them, though.  If you won't be able to do that, that's why I also suggested putting the deletion routine in your scripts that will be commonly run.  It can be sort of like an "unprivileged" person's cron. 

[Lassie]

Right I follow you.I am running on widows.

Thanks.