Question

I’m a beginner with php and have created a code displaying a table with the data concerning my users, that is in my database.
This is the code I used.

Name
Surname
Date of Birth
Town of Birth
Code
Address
E-mail
“;

while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result))

{echo"<tr>";
echo"<td>" . $row['Name'] . "</td>";
echo"<td>" . $row['Surname'] . "</td>";
echo"<td>" . $row['DateofBirth'] . "</td>";
echo"<td>" . $row['TownofBirth'] . "</td>";
echo"<td>" . $row['Code'] . "</td>";
echo"<td>" . $row['Address'] . "</td>";
echo"<td>" . $row['Email'] . "</td>";
echo'<td><a href="delete.php?id='.$row['Code'].'">Delete</a></td>';
echo"</tr>";
}
echo"</table>";
?>

I also have created a delete.php file which allows to delete users from the db by clicking on the “delete” link, but I also wanted this code to remove a folder named with the username of the user, that is situated in the current work directory. This is the code I wrote:

<?php
$con=mysql_connect("localhost","root","mypassword");
mysql_select_db("mydb",$con);
function deletedir($dirname){
    if(file_exists($dirname) && is_file($dirname)) {
        unlink($dirname);
    } elseif(is_dir($dirname)) {
        $handle=opendir($dirname);
        while(false!==($file=readdir($handle))){
            if(is_file($dirname.$file)){
                unlink($dirname.$file);
            }
        }
        $handle=closedir($handle);
        rmdir($dirname);
    }
}

if (isset($_GET['id'])) {
    $id=$_GET['id'];
    $sql=mysql_query("SELECT Username FROM Users WHERE Code='$id'");
    while($row=mysql_fetch_array($sql)) {
        $username=$row['Username'];
        deletedir($username);
    }

    $result=mysql_query("DELETE FROM Users WHERE Code='$id'") or die(mysql_error());
    header("location: index.php");
} else {
    header("location: index.php");
}

?> 

This code deletes the user from the db but it doesn’t remove the folder called $username. Please help me to understand where the error is. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

I think this is your problem:

unlink and rmdir need a full path to the files/directories to remove if the deleting script isn’t in the same directory as what you are trying to delete.

Try adding something like this to the top of your deletedir function:

$dir = "/opt/www/userdirs"
$dirname = $dir . '/' . $dirname;

Change “/opt/www/userdirs” to the directory where your directories to delete reside.

And I think that you also need to change all of these:

$dirname.$file

To:

$dirname . '/' . $file