PHP Handling files - Delete uploaded files if form not submitted - php

I have a form for the new offer/product.
It has an images drag'n'drop field with draggable reordering possibility.
My question is:
What is the logic (steps) of handling uploaded files?
Specifically how to delete files uploaded by user, if he/she didn't submit the form? (Preventing storing unused files)
The scenario: user uploaded images, then after not submitting form (opening another link, closing window etc.) files will be deleted.
As an example I think of this:
Save uniquely named files in /tmp directory of site
Add info about them in $_SESSION var
If form submitted, move them to specific destination, else cron will clean up /tmp folder once per day
What is your suggestions?

Related

Is there any mechanism in Laravel 5 to delete unused uploaded files?

There are situations where a user uploads a file (say image field inside a form) but doesn't save the form and simply close the browser. It causes unused files to reside inside the server.
In some CMSs like Drupal there is a mechanism to detect such files and delete them after a while. They create a table called file_managed, and for every uploaded file, they assign the id of the content which it belongs to. So it is easy to find unused files.
I would like to know is there any mechanism like this in Laravel that detects the unused uploaded files?
thanks.
The selected file won't be uploaded if form is not submitted. In case of ajax upload, place the file in any temporary folder first, when the user completes the form and submits it, move the uploaded picture to the correct path and remove it from the temporary folder.
You can write some cron jobs or queues to empty the temporary folder
I know its an old post, but to update it to more recent solution to this problem (Laravel 8 at this time) --> this video helped me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs4EQqFcD-c

Could my file structure be causing the issues with my photo upload system?

I'm trying to create a photo upload system following Adam Khourys online tutorials.
http://www.developphp.com/view.php?tid=1395 - Upload multiple files video
http://www.developphp.com/view.php?tid=1304 - User profile upload
Most of the code is like for like, but with my own variable names used instead. One major difference is instead of creating 3 different file upload fields as in the multiple upload video I created my form to allow multiple selections from just one upload field.
Below is a brief overview of the files, their location and what the page does.
create_post.php located in root directory - the page that allows for image upload
image_uploader.php located in root > includes directory - the page that contains the upload form, made as a seperate file to be included into any page that may require photo uploads.
photo_system.php located in root > parsers directory - the page that handles image upload.
When I go to the create a post page, click the link to upload image(s) all works well, I can see the form, I can even select the files I would like to try and upload but when I click the upload button nothing seems to happen, when photo_system.php should load.
I've added a line of code to photo_system.php right at the top that should bring up an alert box once the page has loaded, in an attempt to debug my issues, but I never see this unless I go directly to image_uploader.php
This has lead me to believe that maybe my relative links to files were the issue so I've tried appending $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] to the start of the links to ensure it can alway locate them from the root directory, currently I have it set up with a hard coded $root variable and still I can't seem to get the system to work.
Is it likey that the file structure and the way the pages interact with each other is my problem? Could anyone take a look at my code for these three files and see if they can spot anything? I've been stumped by this for a week or so now so I think its time to ask for some outside help.
I have my 3 files saved in a txt format so the code can be viewed
http://www.vwrx-project.co.uk/temp_source_code/create_post.txt
http://www.vwrx-project.co.uk/temp_source_code/image_uploader.txt
http://www.vwrx-project.co.uk/temp_source_code/photo_system.txt
It turns out that in the end I was trying to nest two tables one inside the other so this was part of my issue.
The way that I had it set up I was including the photo upload system, image_uploader.php, as a table with an action requesting the photo_system.php file which worked when I went to the image_uploader.php page directly.
I also had in my main page where the images were being uploaded a form that had been set to onsubmit = false and this was canceling out the form action of the included file.
I only found this out when I decided to try and code it straight into one file else I'd still be stuck now.

Implementation of fully functional media uploading in web application

Suppose we have the web application which handle create, read, update and delete articles and each article should have gallery of images. I have to make one to one relation between Article and Gallery and one to many relation between Gallery and Media.
HTML5 gives a lot of features like multiupload, so I want to use this excellent http://blueimp.github.io/jQuery-File-Upload/ plugin for that. The problem is how to handle the file upload "in memory" like other form's data?
For example when we show the page for create new article we should be able to fill in article's data fields and select images to upload, next when we click the save button the images should start upload and after that the form should submit. When validation fails the images should be still displayed on the frontend, but on the server-side nothink should be saved.
One of the solutions is create somethink like "create entity session temporary id" before displaying the entire form and that id can be used to create temporary directory for save uploads, so after success saved form these images can be moved to appropriate directory, but how to make the "create entity session temporary id"?
The other solution I think is the "with the edit id" approach, because we can handle the uploads with previously saved gallery id, but sometimes I can't save new blank article with gallery, cause some of the fields should't be empty in db.
For the Rails I saw https://github.com/thoughtbot/paperclip gem which in the Readme says:
Paperclip is intended as an easy file attachment library for Active Record. The intent behind it was to keep setup as easy as possible and to treat files as much like other attributes as possible. This means they aren't saved to their final locations on disk, nor are they deleted if set to nil, until ActiveRecord::Base#save is called.
My question is how it works?
The problem with enabling file uploads on the create mask is that you eventually end up with orphaned files. This is because a user is able to trigger the upload without saving the actual entity. While creating a very own UploadBundle I thought about this problem for a while and came to the conclusion that there is no truly proper solution.
I ended up implementing it like this:
Given the fact that our problem arise from orphaned files, I created an Orphanage which is in charge of managing these files. Uploaded files will first be stored in a separate directory, along with the session_id. This helps distinguishing files across different users. After submitting the form to create the actual entity, you can retrieve the files from the orphanage by using only your session id. If the form was valid you can move the files from the temporary orphanage directory to the final destination of your files.
This method has some pitfalls:
The orphanage directory itself should be cleaned on a regular basis using a cron job or the like.
If a user will upload files and choose not to submit the form, but instead start over with a new form, the newly uploaded files are going to be moved in the same directory. Therefore you will get both the files uploaded the first time and the second time after getting the uploaded files.
This is not the ultimate solution to this problem but more of a workaround. It is in my opinion however cleaner than using temporary entities or session based storage systems.
The mentioned bundle is available on Github and supports both Orphanage and the jQuery File Uploader plugin.
1up-lab/OneupUploaderBundle
I haven't work with the case personaly, but my co-worker had similar conundrum. She used
punkave/symfony2-file-uploader-bundle
It's a bundle that wrapps jQuery File Upload plugin. It is in the early stages and a lot of things are missing, such as event, but we gave it a shot.
That's what we do: in newAction() we create entity, generate unique dir ID, and store the ID in entity (via regular setDirId()). Than we create the form, which contains hidden field dirId.
We are uploading the files to temp dir on server via ajax, not during the submit. Ajax request requires the ID. It stores files in temp_dir/prefix_ID
Than it's quite simple. Form is sent. If form is valid - move files from temp to dest dir. If not - we have the ID, and are able to show the images.
However, we do not save information about individual files in a separate table in the database. Every time we read the contents of the folder that corresponds to our dirId.
I know it's not the solution You are asking for. It's rather a workaround.

Where does php store uploaded files and for how long? FILES array says in /tmp but I do not see them

I'm writing a portion of a php application, and when all of the forms have been filled out (2 pages of forms), the user has the option to 'preview' their post before submitting it to the db. Using sessions to store the text information is easy enough, and when I get to the preview page, I can simply pull the text data from session. The problem is, they can also upload an image with their post. I know that I can move_uploaded_file the image to a temp location, display it, and then delete it once the user posts/decides not to post. But I'm wondering if I can just pull the image from this /tmp location and display it just for the preview page without having to move_uploaded_file. Thanks
The uploaded data is removed from the /tmp location when the script finishes. If you do not move it to another location, it will be gone forever. It works like this:
HTTP request comes in with uploaded file data
PHP moves the data into a tmp file
PHP starts your script, puts the name of the tmp file into the $_FILES array
when your script is finished, PHP removes the tmp file, if it's still present

PHP File upload redirect

Ok, this is might sound like a security hole but let's ignore that for a while. I need to allow users to upload a file to my website but I want to be in control of generating that file. I have a form where I want the user to create the new file and then that file should be the one that is uploaded. Is there anyway I can subvert the file upload control so that instead of popping up the 'Open' dialog box, it pops up my form and then when the form is submitted, the new created file is the one that's uploaded with the control?
Alternatively, I figure I could just use a regular button and a bit of JavaScript to open up my form in a window but then I would need a way to automatically the file to the form to be uploaded when my external form closes.
Thanks for the help!
If you want to be in control of generating that file, why not just have the form submit all of the information required to generate the control, and then generate the file on the server?

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