[RESOLVED] It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!

Jason_Batten

Alright. Is there away you can store something in a database and have itself delete itself after a set amount of time, say 7 days 😕

This could be an easy answered question yet again it may not be I really have no idea... I'm guessing no after a quick search on google and through the two php books I own 🙁

REASON. I want to record data from visitors for a week, then delete them, the records not the visitors 😉 using a database.

Cheers for any help.

nemonoman

There's no reason why you couldn't include a script in every page
DELETE from person WHERE timestamp<CURRENT_DATE()-INTERVAL 7 DAY

If you're smart you'll use fields of type TIMESTAMP which will store the time of the last record update automatically, and not try to kluge up your own method of saving update times.

thorpe

a cron job is what your after. search the board.

notaloser

i just deleted a whole thing i started typing because i was confused on the whole cron job deal with something like this.. but he could just timestamp all of his records and have a cron job set up that runs a script every couple of minutes and takes the expired ones and deletes them? it wouldnt be down to the last second but it seems like the most logical way..

thorpe

have a cron job set up that runs a script every couple of minutes

you can set a cron job up to run once a week.

notaloser

yeah i know that.. but wouldnt it be hard or too much to set up a cron job for each record? instead he could set one up that runs by the minute or so, querying records that have timestamps older than 7 days and deleting them?

leatherback

I think the ideal solution is probably between the cronjob and the auto-delete in every page:

If the serverload is heavy, with lots of users and lots of records to go through, running a delete query for each page is going to cost you a lot of serverpower for nothing. THen runnin a cronjob daily or twice daily would do the job smoothly (Also depending on whether a few hours more or less then 7 days is important..).

On the other hand: With only a handfull of users every week, the delete function in the page could work nicely too. If it would safe you the need to learn how to initiate cron jobs, it could be a good way to go?

My 2cts.

Jason_Batten

I take it a cron job is a way of running a script on the server automatically?
So I simply create a PHP script to do a task then setup a cron job in my control panel? and I'm all done?

notaloser

you pretty much hit the nail on the head.. cron jobs are pretty easy the way i described.. im not sure how hard it would be to write a script to start a cron job for each record you get.. youll need someone with more cron job experience to answer that

nemonoman

I stand by my original approach as the easiest. If the timestamp field is indexed, you'll have virtually no server load.

leatherback

nemonoman wrote:
If the timestamp field is indexed, you'll have virtually no server load.

Unless you run websites with 1000+ users a day. (One of mine is currently drawing 30 000+ visitors a month, with 100 000+ pageloads. That is 100 000 queries you could avoid with a cronjob...)

nemonoman

At .001 seconds per query (might be less), that would be 100 seconds/month, and would be a gnat on the overall server load. Anyway the proposed 1/min cron job runs 43200 times/ month, whether it's needed or not.

I think one might then also consider doing the delete only on the main page upon entry, for example? which in your case would be at the very least 2/3 the cronjob load.

On the other hand, on a site that busy the php scripter would likely be somewhat beyond the point of saying 'gosh, how do I do a cron job??' or 'can I set up a cron job per record??'

The cron job adds multiple points of failure in a project driven by a novice. Sometimes stupid and simple is OK, even if not the best or most elegant answer.

Jason_Batten

Cheers for the help 🙂
I was wondering how I would auto-matically run a script... the answer CRON JOB, Cheers all!

leatherback

nemonoman wrote:
On the other hand, on a site that busy the php scripter would likely be somewhat beyond the point of saying 'gosh, how do I do a cron job??' or 'can I set up a cron job per record??'

The cron job adds multiple points of failure in a project driven by a novice. Sometimes stupid and simple is OK, even if not the best or most elegant answer.

I absolutely agree (See my first post in this thread)