Transient Cleaner vs WP-Sweep

Clean expired transients from your options table. The original and best! Transient housekeeping was added to the core of WordPress after version 5.8. However, I have decided to open up this plugin to all versions to allow for manual transient cleaning. Longer term I am working on a new version of the plugin, designed specifically for all WordPress releases. Tested up to PHP 8.2 Fully complies with WordPress coding standards Compliant with the stronger WordPress VIP coding standards, as well as compatibility with their platform Community plugin – visit the Github page to get involved with the latest code development, request enhancements and report issues “Transients are a simple and standardized way of storing cached data in the WordPress database temporarily by giving it a custom name and a timeframe after which it will expire and be deleted.” Unfortunately, expired transients only get deleted when you attempt to access them. If you don’t access the transient then, even though it’s expired, WordPress will not remove it. This is a known “issue” but due to reasons, which are explained in the FAQ, this has not been adequately resolved. Why is this a problem? Transients are often used by plugins to “cache” data (my own plugins included). Because of this it means that expired data can be left and build up, resulting in a bloated database table. Meantime, this plugin is the hero that you’ve been waiting for. Simply activate the plugin, sit back and enjoy a much cleaner, smaller options table. It also adds the additional recommendation that after a database upgrade all transients will be cleared down. The Settings Screen Within Administration -> Tools -> Transients an options screen exists allowing you to tweak when you’d like cleaning to happen, including the ability to perform an ad-hoc run, and when you’d like the to be automatically scheduled. You can even request an optimization of the options table to give your system a real “pep”! Running in Lite mode A “lite” mode is available. By activating this the options screen will no longer appear and default settings will be used. The advantage? Improved performance to Admin and, especially if you’re running multi-site, no chance of anybody “tinkering” with the settings. To activate, use the following… define( 'TC_LITE', true ); This should be added to your wp-config.php file. Using hooks If you’re the type of odd person who likes to code for WordPress (really?) then I’ve added a couple of hooks so you can call our rather neat cleaning functions… housekeep_transients – this will clear down any expired transients clear_all_transients – this will remove any and all transients, expired or otherwise Acknowledgements I’d like to thank WordPress Developer Andrew Nacin for his early discussion on this. Also, I’d like to acknowledge the useful article at Everybody Staze for ensuring the proposed solution made sense, and W-Shadow.com for the cleaning code. Iconography is courtesy of the very talented Janki Rathod.

WP-Sweep finds the rows WordPress leaves behind and removes them. Revisions of posts you edited years ago, meta belonging to a post that was deleted, terms attached to nothing, term relationships pointing at posts that no longer exist, expired transients: none of it is visible anywhere in wp-admin, and all of it is in your database. It uses the proper WordPress delete functions wherever they can reach the row, rather than running raw delete queries, so the hooks other plugins rely on still fire. Only the rows the API refuses to touch — orphaned meta whose object ID is 0 — are deleted directly. Features Revisions Auto drafts Deleted posts Unapproved comments Spammed comments Deleted comments Orphaned post meta Orphaned comment meta Orphaned user meta Orphaned term meta Orphaned term relationships Unused terms Duplicated post meta Duplicated comment meta Duplicated user meta Duplicated term meta Transient options oEmbed caches in post meta Optimizes database tables Delete functions used wp_delete_post_revision() wp_delete_post() wp_delete_comment() delete_post_meta() delete_comment_meta() delete_user_meta() delete_term_meta() wp_remove_object_terms() wp_delete_term() delete_transient() delete_site_transient() Known incompatibilities These plugins keep data in places WP-Sweep reads as orphaned. Protect their meta keys with the filters under Usage before sweeping. Custom Fonts Elementor Popup Builder MailPress Meta Slider Polylang Slider Revolution Viba Portfolio WPML Donations I spent most of my free time creating, updating, maintaining and supporting these plugins, if you really love my plugins and could spare me a couple of bucks, I will really appreciate it. If not feel free to use it without any obligations. Usage Every sweep is irreversible, so back your database up first. The screen lists every sweep with a short description of what it removes, how many items that is, and what proportion of the table they are. Tick the ones you want and use the Sweep bulk action, or use each row’s Sweep and Details buttons one at a time. Nothing on the screen needs JavaScript: the buttons are ordinary links and the bulk action is an ordinary form. There is no settings screen. The one thing worth tuning — how many items Details lists, 500 by default — is the wp_sweep_limit_details filter. The cap exists because the whole sample is held in memory and written into the page. WP-CLI wp sweep --all wp sweep revisions wp sweep revisions auto_drafts deleted_posts REST API All three routes need the activate_plugins capability. GET /wp-json/sweep/v1/count/ GET /wp-json/sweep/v1/details/ DELETE /wp-json/sweep/v1/sweep/ Item names revisions, `auto_drafts`, `deleted_posts`, `unapproved_comments`, `spam_comments`, `deleted_comments`, `transient_options`, `orphan_postmeta`, `orphan_commentmeta`, `orphan_usermeta`, `orphan_termmeta`, `orphan_term_relationships`, `unused_terms`, `duplicated_postmeta`, `duplicated_commentmeta`, `duplicated_usermeta`, `duplicated_termmeta`, `optimize_database`, `oembed_postmeta`. Filters wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist (array) — post meta keys that must never be deleted, by the orphaned or the duplicated post meta sweep. * matches any run of characters. Default: empty. wp_sweep_commentmeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for comment meta. wp_sweep_usermeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for user meta. wp_sweep_termmeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for term meta. wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies (array) — taxonomies left out of the orphaned term relationships sweep. Default: array( 'link_category' ). wp_sweep_excluded_termids (array) — term IDs left out of the unused terms sweep. Default: each taxonomy’s default term, plus any term that is the parent of another. wp_sweep_limit_details (int) — how many items a Details list shows. Default: 500. wp_sweep_defer_counts (bool) — whether the Sweep screen renders first and fetches its counts afterwards, one at a time. Return false to compute every count with the page, as versions before 2.0.1 always did. Default: true. wp_sweep_capability (string $capability, string $context) — the capability required. $context is one of sweep, ajax or rest. wp_sweep_total_count (int $count, string $name) — the total number of rows a sweep’s percentage is measured against. wp_sweep_count (int $count, string $name) — how many items a sweep would remove. wp_sweep_details (array $details, string $name) — the sample list shown by Details. wp_sweep_sweep (string $message, string $name) — the message reported after a sweep has run. Actions wp_sweep_admin_post_sweep, `wp_sweep_admin_comment_sweep`, `wp_sweep_admin_user_sweep`, `wp_sweep_admin_term_sweep`, `wp_sweep_admin_option_sweep` and `wp_sweep_admin_database_sweep` all fire below the sweep table, in that order. Protect specific post meta keys from being swept: add_filter( 'wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist', function ( $meta_keys ) { $meta_keys[] = '_my_plugin_setting'; $meta_keys[] = '_acme_*'; return $meta_keys; } ); Exclude an additional taxonomy from the orphaned term relationships sweep: add_filter( 'wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies', function ( $taxonomies ) { $taxonomies[] = 'product_type'; return $taxonomies; } );