Mass Delete Spam Clients

[WHMCS Josh 17]

An unfortunate trait of the internet is spam and automated bots disseminating that spam. As a business operator on the internet, you may also receive orders submitted in bulk by automated bots. There can be situations where you need to delete lots of clients with the same first name.

This small script leverages the local API to cleanly delete all clients who match the specified term.

 

 

This script is provided as-is, without warranty, and in the understanding for the potential to permanently and irreversibly delete data. Before running this script, please make a database backup:

<?php
/**
 * Delete spam clients where the firstname contains 5666Q.COM
 * using advanced database interaction and the DeleteClient API
 *
 * @link https://developers.whmcs.com/advanced/db-interaction/
 * @link https://developers.whmcs.com/api-reference/deleteclient/
 *
 * @author     WHMCS Limited <development@whmcs.com>
 * @copyright  Copyright (c) WHMCS Limited 2005-2018
 * @license    https://www.whmcs.com/eula/ WHMCS Eula
 */

require 'init.php';

use WHMCS\Database\Capsule;

// Replace ADMIN_USERNAME with your admin username
$adminUsername = 'ADMIN_USERNAME';

echo '<pre>';

// Loop through all clients where firstname contains 5666Q.COM
foreach (Capsule::table('tblclients')->where('firstname', 'like', '%5666Q.COM%')->get() as $client) {

    // Delete the client with DeleteClient API
    $results = localAPI('DeleteClient', ['clientid' => $client->id], $adminUsername);

    // Check for errors
    if ($results['result'] == 'success') {
        echo "Deleted Client ID: " . $client->id;
    } else {
        echo "Error deleting Client ID: " . $client->id;
    }
}

echo '</pre>';

 

Begin by entering your adminstrator's username on line 19:

$adminUsername = 'ADMIN_USERNAME';

Upload the script to your WHMCS directory, and visit in your browser.

The script will search through all the clients matching the criteria specified in this line:

'firstname', 'like', '%5666Q.COM%'

It will then properly and permanently delete matching clients and associated records.

The last step is to show which clients are deleted, and if a problem was occurred.

 

The file should then be deleted from your server.

 

At the time of writing this post, this script was tested on the latest stable release of WHMCS 7.5.1 and should work with any that fall under Active Support as per the LTS schedule here: https://docs.whmcs.com/Long_Term_Support#WHMCS_Version_.26_LTS_Schedule

If you have any feedback, questions, or concerns that I did not cover in this post, please feel free to reach out!

delete_spam_clients.php