"onClose" - is it the Holy Grail, or what?

freedmania

I've written a web application that creates lots of temp files. There's no way to tell which will be ultimately 'kept' until the user actually leaves the site. It would be nice if all users logged off, just as it would be if devil's food with fudge icing supplied all our needed nutriments.

I understand why JavaScript has no 'onClose' function (when the site closes, there's no JavaScript left alive). PHP, however, being server-side, could be addressed by a closing browser. A function could be triggered. All irrelevant files could be 'unlinked'.

I'm kind of new here. I haven't found any reference to anything remotely resembling such a function in the manual.

Any chance there's one lurking in some library somewhere? Or, am I off on another quixotic tangent?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Paul

Weedpacket

freedmania wrote:
I understand why JavaScript has no 'onClose' function (when the site closes, there's no JavaScript left alive). PHP, however, being server-side, could be addressed by a closing browser. A function could be triggered. All irrelevant files could be 'unlinked'.

Conceptual fail. PHP, being server-side, doesn't know what the browser is doing after it receives the server's response. However, it would be possible for the browser to know that the browser is closing (and I think Gecko-based browsers may have an onClose handler; not that I've ever found any use for it).

Do you really need all these temporary files? Do you need to keep them around for the whole session or can you trash them after each request (see the [man]tmpfile[/man] and related functions for that)? Speaking of sessions: have you considered using sessions to store session data? Writing your own session handler if the default mechanism isn't suitable?

HalfaBee

what about onUnload?

Wes

hey

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.connection-status.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.connection-aborted.php

here's the solution
you can use ob_* to check the connection in real-time

freedmania

Weedpacket;10892567 wrote:
Do you really need all these temporary files? Do you need to keep them around for the whole session or can you trash them after each request (see the [man]tmpfile[/man] and related functions for that)?

Thanks to all for your responses. Sorry to leave this hanging. I'm running from one fire to another right now...

Yeah, sadly, I do need these objects to be files (they're 'gd' generated graphics and apparently can only be accessed from hd, not from ram), and while there are events I can use to trigger a cleanup, there's no guarantee the user will make one of those events his last choice. Just as likely, she'll simply leave the site. I'm trying to cover that contingency.

Geez. Text editors prompt you if you leave without saving. I just wanna do the same thing ... more or less ...

As to "onUnLoad" ... has anyone ever used such a command? I can't find it (caps or no caps) in the manual or anywhere else I've looked. But I've seen obscure references to it in this maillist.

I'll try the tmpfile thing and be back later.

Thanks again.

Piranha

A link to onnload javascript function.

But I think it is a bad idea to use it that way, there is no guarantee that the user have javascript turned on. Have you thought on having a hourly/daily job that cleans up the temp files for you?

devinemke

why don't you just run a cron every hour to cleanup temp files that have not been touched in a while? (compare [man]time[/man] to [man]filemtime[/man])

NogDog

It doesn't even have to be a cron job: it could just be a script you either include() or exec() from one of the PHP scripts in question here.