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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T22:25:08+00:00

I have a web site which handles files management. User can upload file, add

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I have a web site which handles files management. User can upload file, add description, edit and delete. What are the best practices for that kind of scenario?

  1. I store files in the file system.

  2. How should I handle deleting of the file? In this case I have to entities to delete: file and entry in database. First scenario is that I delete file and if there was no error I delete the entry from database. But then if the entry from database couldn’t be deleted I cannot restore my file. So the second scenario is oposite: first entry from the database and then file. But again, when file cannot be deleted I cannot restore the entry in db. Which approach is better? Or is there any other?

I think the problem is universal for all web programming languages and all databases engines. But let’s say that I have MySQL and PHP, so deleting the file from the level of database store procedure is not possible.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I usually find it best to go with doing soft deletes, especially for data in the database.

    Doing it this way you could simply put the file in a new location to denote it as being deleted, and mark the entry in the database as being removed. This then allows you to still work with the file if the database delete fails for some reason.

    Once you have the file in a new location, you can either backup that location to another place or set something up to periodically delete items from that location.

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