Recently I attended a session where a few developers would discuss about the website they have done. One of the developers approached me and asked me if there is a way that you could delete data from MySQL database once a week / at regular interval. I thought this short tutorial will be useful for one who wish to do so on the LAMP stack.

Step 1: We will come up with the php file that will do the delete function, from MySQL database and upload it.

$link = mysql_connect(‘localhost’, ‘mysql_user’, ‘mysql_password’);

if (!$link) {
die(‘Could not connect: ‘ . mysql_error());
}

mysql_select_db(‘mydb’);

mysql_query(“DELETE FROM mytable WHERE WHERE dateInserted > ‘2012-9-9′”);

In my sample code above, i did, “DELETE FROM mytable WHERE WHERE dateInserted > ‘2012-9-9′”. It depends on what you want to do, you can always change the conditions on why it should be deleted. I have also saved it as DeleteData.php

Step 2: Since I have cPanel, i used cPanel and go into Cron Jobs

Step 3: I will setup the cron job to run at once a week.(Of course you can set otherwise)

Note that for Command, you have to specify where the file lies, after you upload.

You can download the mentioned, DeleteData.php here.

Delete records from mysql automatically

Hope this is helpful for those who are finding a quick tutorial on how this can done. If you have any questions, please feel free to email [email protected], use the contact us form or alternatively you can comment. 🙂

I will post a tutrial on how we can do this on WISA stack.