How to delete files from directory based on creation date in php?
I think you could go about this by looping through the directory with readdir and delete based on the timestamp:
<?php
$path = '/path/to/files/';
if ($handle = opendir($path)) {
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
$filelastmodified = filemtime($path . $file);
//24 hours in a day * 3600 seconds per hour
if((time() - $filelastmodified) > 24*3600)
{
unlink($path . $file);
}
}
closedir($handle);
}
?>
The if((time() - $filelastmodified) > 24*3600)
will select files older than 24 hours (24 hours times 3600 seconds per hour). If you wanted days, it should read for example 7*24*3600 for files older than a week.
Also, note that filemtime
returns the time of last modification of the file, instead of creation date.
It should be
if((time()-$filelastmodified) > 24*3600 && is_file($file))
to avoid errors for the .
and ..
directories.
The below function lists the file based on their creation date:
private function listdir_by_date( $dir ){
$h = opendir( $dir );
$_list = array();
while( $file = readdir( $h ) ){
if( $file != '.' and $file != '..' ){
$ctime = filectime( $dir . $file );
$_list[ $file ] = $ctime;
}
}
closedir( $h );
krsort( $_list );
return $_list;
}
Example:
$_list = listdir_by_date($dir);
Now you can loop through the list to see their dates and delete accordingly:
$now = time();
$days = 1;
foreach( $_list as $file => $exp ){
if( $exp < $now-60*60*24*$days ){
unlink( $dir . $file );
}
}