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phppdf-generationfpdfhtml2pdf

Clean up after creating the pdf

I'm generating a pdf file with html2fpdf. 

$pdf = new HTML2FPDF();
$pdf->HTML2FPDF("P","mm","A4");
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->WriteHTML($html);
$pdf->output('sample.pdf');

This sample works great. But:

How do I delete the pdf after the output? I just want to have links in my tool, the users can download the pdf and after that it shoud be deleted on the server.

How can I 'clean up' after generating the pdf?

Solution

  • You can use PHP's file deletion function called unlink()

    Call this function with the full path to the generated PDF file (or any file for that matter) and PHP will delete that file.

    http://php.net/manual/en/function.unlink.php

    You don't necessarily have to delete the file immediately after the user has downloaded it. You can just as easily place all the generated files in one central folder and have a cron job execute a more general clean up script simply removing the older files.

    One method could be -

    • Scan the contents of the folder using scandir().
    • Iterate over its files in a foreach loop..
    • Inspect the creation time of each file using filemtime().
    • If the creation time was over hour ago, delete the file using unlink().

    Because you are generating the PDF file yourself within your PHP code, I didn't mention the permissions consideration. Here would be a good place to mention that your PHP must have the correct file system permissions in order to perform any action on the file system. You are creating a PDF file so it's safe to assume that you have the correct permissions to make changes to the file system but if you plan on using this unlink() function in other scripts make sure that the files you are dealing with have the correct permissions set.