PHP: A good script to clear temporary file for cron?

Question

I have a temporary folder generated by my business application and wish for the documents within to be only available for around 30 minutes. I was tempted to build an index to keep track of when each file was created but that would be a little silly for just temporary files, they are not of too much importance but I would like them to removed according to the time they were last modified.

What would I need to do this with my Linux server?

Answer 1

You'd need nothing more than to call stat on the files and decide whether to unlink them or not based on their mtime.

Call this script every ten minutes or so from cron or anacron.

Or you could use tmpwatch, a program designed for this purpose.

Answer 2

The function filemtime() will allow you to check the last modify date of a file. What you will need to do is run your cron job each minute and check if it is greater than the threshold and unlink() it as needed.

$time = 30; //in minutes, time until file deletion threshold
foreach (glob("app/temp/*.tmp") as $filename) {
    if (file_exists($filename)) {
        if(time() - filemtime($filename) > $time * 60) {
            unlink($filename);
        }
    }
}  

This should be the most efficient method as you requested, change the cron threshold to 10 minutes if you need a less accuracy in case there are many files.