UploadForm - Erase Old Upload when Adding New One

Hi Perch

If you need to just get the most recent upload, that's easy enough to do in code. What exactly do you need?

Hi, Claire

There are a couple of instances when it would be simpler to be dealing with just one image at a time. An example would be a user's profile pic. When they upload a new photo the old image should be deleted automatically.

How could I add this functionlaity to the UploadForm3 script which is available on this site?

Thanks,

Perch

Hi Perch, 

It's possible to do that with custom code.  But from a usability point of view I would advise again ever erasing user data without them explicitly confirming that's what they want to do.

Otherwise you're going to end up with support messages from users who "tried" a new image only to have their old image automatically erased and now they can't find it and want it back.  I say that because we see the end-user feedback and situations like that are pretty common.  

One alternative would be to only show the "newest" upload as their profile pic.  So uploading a new image replaces the old one, but erasing the new one brings back the new one.  Kind of like how facebook keeps a history of your facebook profile pics.

Another would be to show them a message that advises them they need to erase the old image first.

So there's some ideas.  If you still want to auto-erase after that let me know and I'll see if I can get you some simple code to do it on UploadForm3.

Hope that helps!