Swiftmailer remove attachment after send - php

Question

I am trying to remove the attachment files after sending an email with Symfony 2.1 and Swiftmailer but if I delete the file before returning a response object (a redirect), the email does not send.
I suppose this is because symfony sends the email in the response, so when the email has send the attachment has been removed already.
For example:
<?php
// DefaultCotroller.php
$message = \Swift_Message::newInstance($subject)
->setFrom('no-reply#dasi.es')
->setTo($emails_to)
->setBody($body, 'text/html')
->attach(\Swift_Attachment::fromPath('backup.rar'));
$this->get('mailer')->send();
unlink('backup.rar'); // This remove the file but doesn't send the email!
return $this->redirect($this->generateUrl('homepage'));
An option is to create a crontab to clean the files, but I prefer not using it.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can look at the code that processes memory spools here:
https://github.com/symfony/SwiftmailerBundle/blob/master/EventListener/EmailSenderListener.php
This is used to batch the emails to be sent.
You can add this after your send() call and before your unlink() call to mimic the behavior of sending an email
$transport = $this->container->get('mailer')->getTransport();
$spool = $transport->getSpool();
$spool->flushQueue($this->container->get('swiftmailer.transport.real'));

Answer 2

I am not sure, but the message spool might cause this problem. In SF2 memory spool is used by default, which means the messages are being sent on the kernel terminate event.
So you'd have to flush the spool before deleting the file.
If this is the cause of your problem, look here for a well explained solution:
http://sgoettschkes.blogspot.de/2012/09/symfony-21-commands-and-swiftmailer.html

Answer 3

In order to complete the very good answer of james_t, if you use multiple mailers some changes are needed.
Replace
// Default mailer
$mailer = $this->container->get('mailer');
$subject = '...';
$from = '...';
$to = '...';
$body = '...';
$message = \Swift_Message::newInstance()
->setSubject($subject)
->setFrom($from)
->setTo($to)
->setBody($body, 'text/html')
;
// Put e-mail in spool
$result = $mailer->send($message);
// Flush spool queue
$transport = $mailer->getTransport();
$spool = $transport->getSpool();
$realTransport = $this->container->get('swiftmailer.transport.real')
$spool->flushQueue($realTransport);
By
// Custom mailer
$mailerServiceName = 'myCustomMailer';
$customMailer = $this->container->get("swiftmailer.mailer.".$mailerServiceName);
$subject = '...';
$from = '...';
$to = '...';
$body = '...';
$message = \Swift_Message::newInstance()
->setSubject($subject)
->setFrom($from)
->setTo($to)
->setBody($body, 'text/html')
;
// Put e-mail in spool
$result = $customMailer->send($message);
// Flush spool queue
$transport = $customMailer->getTransport();
$spool = $transport->getSpool();
$realTransport = $this->container->get('swiftmailer.mailer.'.$mailerServiceName.'.transport.real');
$spool->flushQueue($realTransport);