How to destroy Codeigniter library instance

Question

I would like to know if there is any way I can destroy a Codeigniter library instance.

What I want to do is something like this:

$this->load->library('my_library');
/**
    Code goes here
**/
$this->my_library->destoy_instance();

The reason I need to do this is because I need to liberate RAM memory while executing a large scripts.

Any help will be greatly appresiated.

Answer 1

You can do simply like that by using unset or setting null.

unset($this->my_library);

OR

$this->my_library = null;

This answer is also worth reading for you to know detail about these two ways.

Edit

There is no built-in method to destroy loaded library object. But you can do it by extending Loader class. And then load and unload library from that class. Here is my sample code ..

application/libraries/custom_loader.php

class Custom_loader extends CI_Loader {
    public function __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
    }

    public function unload_library($name) {
        if (count($this->_ci_classes)) {
            foreach ($this->_ci_classes as $key => $value) {
                if ($key == $name) {
                    unset($this->_ci_classes[$key]);
                }
            }
        }

        if (count($this->_ci_loaded_files)) {
            foreach ($this->_ci_loaded_files as $key => $value)
            {
                $segments = explode("/", $value);
                if (strtolower($segments[sizeof($segments) - 1]) == $name.".php") {
                    unset($this->_ci_loaded_files[$key]);
                }
            }
        }

        $CI =& get_instance();
        $name = ($name != "user_agent") ? $name : "agent";
        unset($CI->$name);
    }
}

In your controller ..

$this->load->library('custom_loader');
// To load library
$this->custom_loader->library('user_agent');
$this->custom_loader->library('email');

// To unload library
$this->custom_loader->unload_library('user_agent');
$this->custom_loader->unload_library('email');

Hope it will be useful.

Answer 2

Ok, I found a solution to this if you need to re-create the same object within the same controller. The trick it to pass in the third property which is a custom name you can assign the object.

$this->load->library('my_library', $my_parameters, 'my_library_custom_name');

If you just want to unset the object PHP will take care of that. You can confirm using a destructor on your class.

public function __destruct() {

    // do something to show you when the object has been destructed

}