how to delete old files in a directory using php

Question

I have a directory for database backups, and a PHP script that makes a backup of the database every day. But after a month or so i will have 30 files in the backup directory. How can i write a PHP script that deletes old backup files every day so that there are always 10 backup files in my directory? when a new backup is stored, the oldest backup file will be deleted and so on ...

Answer 1

You can read the backups directory and delete every file that is older than 30 days. However, I personally create files dynamically, and every file has this format:

database_dump_DD-MM-YYYY_HH:MM:SS.sql

So I can delete the files considering the filename. Since I don't know what's the format of your files, you can delete them like this:

$files = readdir(opendir('backups')); //read directory for files

foreach($files as $file){
    if(filemtime($file) > (time() + 2592000)){ //check if the file is older than 30 days
        unlink($file); //delete
    }
}

Answer 2

After making the backup with the PHP backup you loop through the directory and then remove the oldest backup files:

$files = glob('backupfolder/*.bak');
if(count($files) > 10)
  foreach($files as $file)
    if(time() - filectime($file) > 10 * 24 * 60 * 60)
      unlink($file);

Answer 3

Why go to the effort of using PHP? find command and cron would do the trick