Wire Photos and Expiration

Normally, an image added to Photo Center remains there until it is explicitly deleted. However, it is sometimes convenient to automatically remove images that have passed some date after which they should no longer be used. In a very common example, a contract with a wire service may stipulate that its images be purged after 90 days if not used in a story, gallery, or video. In these scenarios, it’s useful to mark the images with the expiration date so that Photo Center can automatically expire them.

Summary of Behavior

If you set an expiration date on an image, it will be deleted by Photo Center shortly after expiration, unless it is published. (It does not necessarily have to be included in a story, for example; the image just has to be published.) If the image is published, it will have its expiration date cleared so that it will stay in your collection from that point on.

In some cases, you may want an image to be “restricted” at a certain date. Restricted images cannot be added to stories unless the user has the “use restricted photos” privilege. By setting a restricted date, Photo Center will automatically mark the image as restricted.

Technical Details

If an image should expire or become restricted in the future, specify in its ANS:

• An expiration date in the field additional_properties.expiration_date
• A restriction date in the field additional_properties.restriction_date

A background process regularly inspects your Photo Center database for expiring images and images that should become restricted.

• If an expiring image is not published, it is simply deleted
• If the expiring image is published, its expiration date is removed, so it will not be removed at some point in the future
• If an image has reached its restriction date, its restricted property is set