[wp-hackers] Transients that are not re-used after their expiry are never garbage-collected

[David Anderson]

> Why would you have a transient with a unique key? Or a key that
> changes? This sort of defeats the point of using a transient in the
> first place.
>
> Sounds to me like you should fix the code that is using transients incorrectly.
Two examples of where I've used transients that are liable to not get 
garbage collected are:

1) URLs that are only intended to be available for a limited time 
period, and then to expire. A user is invited to visit the URL (e.g. to 
change their credentials, or take a quiz). The transient stores 
information about the invitation. When the invitation expires (via the 
transient expiring), that information perishes with it. But, if the user 
never actually visits the URL, then WP's lack of garbage collection will 
leave this data present forever.

2) Recording whether a particular file (identified via a hash of its 
filename) has had a particular operation performed on it (e.g. upload to 
backup - this may not complete all in one go, so information about the 
upload can be stored for a later attempt via a transient).

The Codex page just describes transients as "a simple and standardized 
way of storing cached data in the database temporarily". I don't see any 
indication in there that the above two use cases are incorrect, or don't 
fit that description somehow.

David

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