Php:: How Long to Tmp Files Stay

php:: how long to tmp files stay?

Files uploaded through POST are deleted right after php script finishes its execution.

According to php.net:
"The file will be deleted from the temporary directory at the end of the request if it has not been moved away or renamed."

How long do uploaded files stay on your server?

it get deleted once the PHP script it was submitted too is finished running

so, you can either make file upload as last step or implement your own garbage collector for the unfinished forms.

What is the right way to clean stored temporary files in php?

Short answer: no.

PHP has no way of self-triggering any actions.

Create a script (or a command if it's a framework) and trigger it with a cronjob.

LAMP - file doesn't appear under tmp directory

Reason for this behaviour

All uploaded files are temporarily stored in the folder location as defined in

(In php.ini)

upload_tmp_dir =

(Read more about this: http://php.net/upload-tmp-dir)

These temporarily stored files are no longer exist after that php script execution(As mentioned in previous answer request life span) finished.

Do the following to view uploaded file while script executing.

upload.html

<html>
<body>
    <form action="upload_file.php" method="post"
    enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <label for="file">Filename:</label>
    <input type="file" name="file" id="file"><br>
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
    </form>
</body>
</html>

upload_file.php

<?php
if ($_FILES["file"]["error"] > 0) {
  echo "Error: " . $_FILES["file"]["error"] . "<br>";
} else {
        $fp=fopen("/tmp/write.log","w+");
        fputs($fp,"Original Name:".$_FILES["file"]["name"].";temporay Name:".$_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"]."\n");
        fclose($fp);
        sleep(50000);
}
?>

Upload file by upload.html

In another terminal apply tail in /tmp/write.log after uploading image(Because sleep time is too much so you able to find the image)

#tail -f /tmp/write.log

Copy that temporary file into any place and place the extension of original image file

For example my printed log line is

Original Name:digits.png;temporay Name:/tmp/phpOKlpoK

(Needed to do this with root privilages)

#cp /tmp/phpOKlpoK /home/sandeep/Desktop/file.png

#chown sandeep.sandeep /home/sandeep/Desktop/file.png

So this is the uploaded file that you.

(
Instead of doing all these steps for checking uploaded images you can use move_uploaded_file()
)

How to get a temporary file path?

For newer (not very new lol) versions of PHP (requires php 5.2.1 or higher) @whik's answer is better suited:

<?php 
// Create a temp file in the temporary 
// files directory using sys_get_temp_dir()
$temp_file = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'MyFileName');
echo $temp_file;
?>

The above example will output something similar to: /var/tmp/MyFileNameX322.tmp

old answer

Just in case someone encounters exactly the same problem. I ended up doing

$fh = fopen($filepath, 'w') or die("Can't open file $name for writing temporary stuff.");
fwrite($fh, $fileData);
fclose($fh);

and

unlink($filepath);

at the end when file is not needed anymore.

Before that, I generated filename like that:

$r = rand();        
$filepath = "/var/www/html/someDirectory/$name.$r.xml";

Php:: How Long to Tmp Files Stay