Attachement file deletion after sending out an email - php

Question

In a larger project, have a form which uploads 2 files. I am using codeigniter as the framework. After the form upload it should send these 2 files as an email.
In order to attach it to an email, we should have a local copy of the file. Hence I move the files to a temporary folder and use the naming convention of [session-id]_my_file_1 and [session-id]_my_file_2
Finally after sending out the email I try to delete the these temporary files. But unlink is not deleting these files. I donot know the reason for this.
My guess is: It may be still being used by the mail command to upload/send. Below are the code outline I have written.
$config['upload_path'] = './tmp_holder/';
$config['allowed_types'] = 'doc|docx|pdf|rtf';
$config['max_size'] = '10240';
$config['file_name'] = $this->session->userdata('session_id').'_1';
$config['overwrite'] = TRUE;
$config2['upload_path'] = './tmp_holder/';
$config2['allowed_types'] = 'doc|docx|pdf|rtf';
$config2['max_size'] = '10240';
$config2['file_name'] = $this->session->userdata('session_id').'_2';
$config2['overwrite'] = TRUE;
$this->load->library('upload',$config);
if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE)
{
$this->load->view('init_app_form');
}
else
{
if($this->upload->do_upload('cvFile') === FALSE) {
$this->load->view('init_app_form');
}
else {
$file1Return = $this->upload->data();
$this->upload->initialize($config2);
if($this->upload->do_upload('researchFile') === FALSE) {
$this->load->view('init_app_form');
}
else {
//process data here
$file2Return = $this->upload->data();
$this->config->load('email');
$this->email->initialize($this->config->item('email_conf'));
$this->email->from($this->config->item('email_from'), $this->input->post('tname').' '.$this->input->post('fname').' '.$this->input->post('lname'));
$this->email->to($this->config->item('email_to'));
$this->email->subject('something');
$this->email->message('something');
$this->email->attach($file1Return['full_path']);
$this->email->attach($file2Return['full_path']);
if( $this->email->send() == false ) {
//error
echo $this->email->print_debugger(); exit;
}
$this->email->clear();
////////////////////////////////
#unlink($this->session->userdata('session_id').'_2');
////////////////////////////////
$this->load->view('init_app_success');
}
////////////////////////////////
#unlink($this->session->userdata('session_id').'_1');
////////////////////////////////
}
}
The Solution I did was to delete the files in the temp folder before I do this so that previous files are cleared. But this is not a clean approach right? This is because:
It may be trying deleting other files currently being used by other parallel instances
I want the tmp folder to be empty after I send itself.

Answer 1

Its better to use file_helper which is in code igniter.
$this->load->helper("file");
delete_files($this->session->userdata('session_id').'_1');
here is documentation for this