从服务器中删除未链接到项目卡的图像

Question

Suppose on the page for adding a product, you can add only one image.

Man presses a button to add an image. Selects the desired image and it is automatically uploaded to the server. There is no need to click an additional UPLOAD button.

The first thing I want to draw your attention to is that the product card has not been created yet, and the image has already been loaded.

Now, suppose the customer has uploaded an image but hasn't created a product card and closed the browser. Naturally, the uploaded image remains on the server.

The image that remains on the server needs to be deleted somehow after a certain time.

I also want to draw your attention to the fact that the client can upload the same image several times.

Now the challenge is how to delete images that are not in use?

I tried to do it in different ways. I wrote each image to a file, then I tried to process it all and nothing comes out.

I have been trying to solve this problem for two weeks. I've tried a lot of options and it just doesn't work.

Is there anyone who faced a similar problem and how did you solve it?

Answer 1

I see two main ways to address this:

1. As pointed out by David Conrad, the usual way is to check for old files that are not referenced by any product and delete them. As you said, you'll need to check the database in order to do that but that shouldn't be too bad.

2. You add some file processing to your product creation. For example, uploaded files end up into a staging area. When the product is created, you move that file into the "product_images" folder for example. That way, you can have a simple cron job that deletes files older than a set amount of time from the staging area.

I personally like to have an "upload" table so that I have additional information about the upload like who uploaded it, from which browser/device, etc.