Deleting files after download in laravel - php

Question

I'm creating a application that lets a user download a file. After the download i want the file to be deleted. The end of my code is like this:
return Response::download(public_path() . '/uploads/_tmp/' . urldecode($filename));
which means that the function ends on the return an i am not able to delete the file. I have tried to call a 'after' filter on the route but then the file gets deleted to quickly.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can use deleteFileAfterSend http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/responses#other-responses
return response()->download($filePath, $fileName, $headers)->deleteFileAfterSend(true);

Answer 2

I personally use the following;
$response = Response::make(file_get_contents($path_to_file), $status_code, $headers);
Status code is obviously the code which you want to return.
Within the $header parameter you can pass an array with the indexes Content-Type and Content-Disposition.
Then you can simply unlink $path_to_file and return $response.
Much easier way of deleting a file would be to use Jon's answer for versions of Laravel > 4.0.
You can use deleteFileAfterSend http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/responses#other-responses
return response()->download($filePath, $fileName, $headers)->deleteFileAfterSend(true);

Answer 3

Simply use this line of code:
return response()->download($file_path)->deleteFileAfterSend(true);
Here, inside download function the file path will be passed as an argument. Let's say for an example you want to backup your database in a file and also want to delete with downloading:
$date = Carbon::now()->format('Y-m-d_h-i');
$pub_path = public_path();
$file_path = $pub_path . '/application/db_backups/' . $date . '.sql';
$output = shell_exec('mysqldump -h58.84.34.65 -uwsit -pwsit97480 websms > ' . $file_path);
return response()->download($file_path)->deleteFileAfterSend(true);

Answer 4

If you want to delete the source file after downloading, simply write it as follows
return response()->download($filePath)->deleteFileAfterSend(true);

Answer 5

$filename = storage_path() . '/testing.txt';
App::finish(function($request, $response) use ($filename)
{
unlink($filename);
});
return Response::download($filename);

Answer 6

For Laravel 5.8 use stream download. In the callback function, delete the file after echo the contents.
Let's take a look at the solution:
return response()->streamDownload(function () use ($pathToTheFile) {
echo Storage::get($pathToTheFile);
Storage::delete($pathToTheFile);
}, 'my-awesome-file-name');
I don't know if it works for the oldest or the latest versions.

Answer 7

unlink('./path/filename.extension');