[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #45277: Garbage collect transients

[WordPress Trac]

#45277: Garbage collect transients
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 Reporter:  dartiss       |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Database      |    Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:  needs-patch
  Focuses:                |
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 5 years later, I would like to re-open the discussion about the fact that
 transients are not correctly housekept (see #20316).

 The issue... expired transients are only housekept if the transient is
 read. If it is not read, it remains in the database.

 The solution... perform a daily garbage collection on expired transients

 This was not implemented 5 years ago because "we don't want a core update
 to be blamed for breaking a site that incorrectly assumes transients
 aren't transient". I would like this discussion to take place again -
 during this time, I have implemented the housekeeping solution with my own
 plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/artiss-transient-cleaner/), which
 has had over 73,000 downloads and not a single person reporting issues (in
 fact, it's known to fix some issues for some users). I'd really like to
 see this issue resolved and my plugin becoming redundant!

 I'd also like to take the conversation further than before, where the
 solution was via MySQL. This works where transients are stored on the
 database, but isn't the case for object caching. I have an alternative
 solution that will work for all storage methods...

 * Enhance the `set_transient` function (and `set_site_transient`) so that
 all transients with an expiry are also stored inside an array, stored on
 the options table. This array will contain the transient name and expiry.
 * Introduce a daily garbage collection task, which will look through this
 array, looking for expired transients
 * For all expired transients, use the existing functions (e.g.
 `delete_transient`) to remove the relevant transient.

 By using this method, no SQL is required, so object cache will be
 correctly housekept too.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/45277>
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