README.md

Self Destruct

This package was built with the goal in mind of creating a repeatable way of having models delete themselves after a specified amount of time. Currently, the package is fairly basic but could be expanded upon to allow deeper customisation and the ability of having per-record expiration times rather than scoped to each model.

What's in the package

• SelfDestruct Trait

This can be used on Models to give it the ability to delete after a specified time.

• Migration

Table that is used to manage the destruction of Models.

How it works

This package works by using the provided Trait on a Model which hooks in to the created event. When a Model is created, it takes the sum of created_at and life_time and stores it in a seperate table. Then, every minute this table is checked for expired records and each Model is deleted.

How to use

1. Adding the package to your project.

composer require roberthucks/selfdestruct

2. Run migration to create the table

php artisan migrate

3. Configure models

The first step here is to add the Trait to the Model. Add use RobertHucks\SelfDestruct\Traits\SelfDestruct; and then user it inside your Models class like so use SelfDestruct; Once these have been added to your Model you need to then add a property called $life_time. This is the amount of seconds that a Model should stay alive for.

Here is how a Model looks when modified:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;
use RobertHucks\SelfDestruct\Traits\SelfDestruct;

class Post extends Model
{
  use SoftDeletes;
  use SelfDestruct;

  protected $table = 'post';
  protected $fillable = [
    'title',
    'body'
  ];
  protected $dates = ['deleted_at'];

  protected $life_time = 60;
}

4. Set up Laravel's scheduler

This package requires the use of the Task Scheduler. You should make sure that it is configured and running correctly on your system or else this package will do nothing.

* * * * * cd /path-to-your-project && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Considerations

This package relies on having a created_at field on your Model. In this future this would be a configurable field or possibly even removed for just having the current time but for now, this is a requirement of the Model.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Task for clearing expired Models runs every minute. This means that the deletion will almost never occur on the exact time of expiry. If there is another way to perform this action I am all ears but this wasn't an issue for my use-case and therefore was a limitation I was happy to accept.