PHP create folder if it does not exist

Question

I am creating a medium size application.

This application consists of a lot of products.

Now these products have many images (one product can have 5 - 6 images)

To try and make some sort of ordering I want to create one folder for each product this folder contains all images that is bound to the product.

Now so far I have tried the following:

move_uploaded_file($file, APP.'product_images/'.$product_id.'/'.$image['name']);

However when I try this I get the following error:

Warning (2): move_uploaded_file(/var/www/udlejnings-priser/cake/app/product_images/22/afterClick.png): failed to open stream: No such file or directory [APP/Controller/ImagesController.php, line 56]

Warning (2): move_uploaded_file() [function.move-uploaded-file]: Unable to move '/tmp/php472ci6' to '/var/www/udlejnings-priser/cake/app/product_images/22/afterClick.png' [APP/Controller/ImagesController.php, line 56]

Now I am not a complete noob and know that this means that I am missing permissions to the folder.

However the problem is that if the folder does not exist (i.e this is the first time an image for that product is uploaded) then a new folder should be created.

My question is two parted.

1. Does this automatically create a new folder if it doesn't already exist?
2. How can I give permission to a newly created folder so that I avoid this problem?

Solution 1

[I] know that this means that i am missing permission to the folder.

Actually no =). The error message reads:

failed to open stream: No such file or directory

Which makes no reference to permissions the problrm is: the containing-folder you're trying to write to doesn't exist.

Does this automatically create a new folder if it doesn't already exist?

No.

How can i give permission to a newly created folder?

It's not necessary to do so - anything created will have the correct permissions to permit the webserver user to read the files. However first it's necessary to try and create a folder, which in the question isn't the case.

Using CakePHP, the Folder class can be used to do that:

App::uses('Folder', 'Utility');
$dir = new Folder('/path/to/folder', 2);

The second parameter is used to create a new folder if it doesn't exist. In the context of the question that means the code would look something like this:

function whatever() {

    if ($this->request->data) {
        ...
        
        $unused = new Folder(APP.'product_images/'.$product_id, true);
        if (move_uploaded_file($file, APP.'product_images/'.$product_id.'/'.$image['name'])) {
            ...
        } else {
            ...
        }
    }
}

The folder APP/product_images should already exist, and must have permissions such that the webserver user (e.g. apache) can write to it otherwise it will not be possible to create the sub-folders/upload files. Assuming APP/product_images exists and the webserver user has permissions to write to it, there is no need to modify permissions of uploaded files - files created by a user are by default readable by that user.

Solution 2

Try this:

if (!file_exists('path/to/directory')) {
    mkdir('path/to/directory', 0777, true);
}

1) Does this automaticly create a new folder if it doesnt already exist. => file_exists and mkdir

2) how can i give permission to a newly created folder so that i avoid this problem => 0777

Comments

[AD7six]

recommending 0777 permissions, especially to solve a permission problem that doesn't exist, is bad advice.