deleting a file after user download it

Question

Hi,

i am using this for sending file to user

header('Content-type:  application/zip');
header('Content-Length: ' . filesize($file));
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="file.zip");
readfile($file);

i want to delete this file after user download it, how can i do this ?

thx

EDIT: my scenario is like that, when user hits download button, my script will create a temp. zip file and user download it then that temp zip file will be delete

EDIT2: OK best way seems running a cron job that will be cleaning temp files once an hour.

EDIT3: I tested my script with unlink , it works unless user cancel the download. if user cancel the download, zip file stays on the server. so that is enough for now :)

EDIT4: WOW! connection_aborted() made the trick !

ignore_user_abort(true);
if (connection_aborted()) {
unlink($f);
}

this one will delete the file even if user cancel the download.

Answer 1

unlink($filename);

This will delete the file.

Answer 2

There is no any correct way to detect whether file was completely downloaded by user or not.
So the best way will be to delete file after some period of inactivity.

Answer 3

The safest way I can think of would be to use some client-side flash movie that can observe the transfer from the client side, and then make an XmlHttpRequest call to the server once the download finishes.

AFAIK, there's no way to do that reliably without using Flash (or a similar browser plugin)

Answer 4

It should work fine to just delete it after readfile because the content being transfered from the file will be read into memory and sent to the client by the webserver after reading it. From that point on, (after the readfile call) you can delete it.

Edit: On second thought, some clients will be using accelerators which will make multiple requests. Therefore, ignore what I've written.