PHP File Upload, Easy To Learn File Upload Tutorial in PHP

PHP File Upload

The PHP File uploads on remote server using a Simple HTML form and PHP. You can upload any kind of file like images, videos, ZIP files, Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, as well as executables files and a wide range of other file types.

The following example will create an simple HTML form that can be used to upload files.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>PHP File Upload</title>
    <style type="text/css">
    	.cus_form{ padding:4px 10px; border-radius:2px; border:1px solid #0099da;}
		.lable{ color:#000; font-size:16px; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic;}
		.cus_btn{ background:#0099da; padding:6px 15px; margin:10px 70px; color:#FFF; }
		.cus_btn:hover{ background:#069;}
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<form action="php_upload_file.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
        <h3>PHP File Upload</h3>
        <p><span style="color:#F00;"><strong>Note :</strong></span> Only .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .png formats allowed to a max size of 5 MB.</p>
        <label class="lable">Filename:</label>
         <input type="file" name="photo" id="fileSelect" class="cus_form"><br />
        <input type="submit" name="submit" class="cus_btn" value="UPLOAD">
</form>
</body>
</html>

move_uploaded_file()

Here's the complete code of our "php_upload_file.php" file. It will store the uploaded file in a upload folder.

<?php
if($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST"){
    if(isset($_FILES["photo"]) && $_FILES["photo"]["error"] == 0){
        $allowed = array("jpg" => "image/jpg", "jpeg" => "image/jpeg", "gif" => "image/gif", "png" => "image/png");
        $filename = $_FILES["photo"]["name"];
        $filetype = $_FILES["photo"]["type"];
        $filesize = $_FILES["photo"]["size"];
    
        $ext = pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
        if(!array_key_exists($ext, $allowed)) die("Error: Please select a valid file format.");
    
        // Verify file size - 5MB maximum
        $maxsize = 5 * 1024 * 1024;
        if($filesize > $maxsize) die("Error: Your File size is too large");
    
        // Verify MYME type of the file
        if(in_array($filetype, $allowed)){
            if(file_exists("upload/" . $_FILES["photo"]["name"])){
                echo $_FILES["photo"]["name"] . " is already exists.";
            } else{
                move_uploaded_file($_FILES["photo"]["tmp_name"], "upload/" . $_FILES["photo"]["name"]);
                echo "Your file was uploaded successfully.";
            } 
        } else{
            echo "Error:  Your uploading your file is problem. Please try again."; 
        }
    } else{
        echo "Error: " . $_FILES["photo"]["error"];
    }
}
?>

Output : Download !

Code Explanation

Once the form is submitted information about the uploaded file can be accessed via PHP superglobal array called $_FILES. For example, our upload form contains a file select field called photo (i.e. name="photo"), if any user uploaded a file using this field, we can obtains its details like the name, type, size, temporary name or any error occurred while attempting the upload via the $_FILES["photo"] associative array, like this:

$_FILES['photo']['name'] : It returns file name.
$_FILES['photo']['type'] : It returns MIME type of the file.
$_FILES['photo']['size'] : It returns size of the file (in bytes).
$_FILES['photo']['tmp_name'] : It returns temporary file name of the file which was stored on the server.
$_FILES['photo']['error'] : It returns error code associated with this file.

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