TangoRangers.com's Blog

If your like me you have scoured the internet trying to find a simple php script that will let a user upload an image and then rename the image to something unique. Well I have just the solution.

First, the only real requirement is PHP and a web server (I use Apache).

Create a new file, lets call it ‘image_upload.php’
At the bottom of the page we are going to put in a basic form to give a browse and upload button.

<form action="./image_upload.php" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post">
Select Image to upload
<input name="thefile" type="file" />
<input name="submit" type="submit" value="upload" />
</form>

The form name isn’t important. The action is. That is the name of the file that needs to be accessed when the upload button is clicked.
Input type is very important, and so is the name.

Now that we have a starting point go to the top of the file. Just to make it easy I’m going to paste the entire code here then explain it part by part.

if(isset($_POST['submit']))
{
 
	$tmp_name = $_FILES['thefile']['tmp_name'];
	$newarray = explode( ".", $_FILES['thefile']['name']);
	$thecount = count($newarray);
	$fileprefix = time() . "." . $newarray[$thecount - 1];
	move_uploaded_file($tmp_name, "../img/$fileprefix");
	exit();
}

To start the if statement at the top is to ensure that the ‘submit’ button was hit before running the script.
The ‘$tmp_name‘ variable is used to get rid of that damn array.
$newarray takes the file’s real name (see note below) and explodes the array into several smaller arrays by the ‘.’. For example, if the file uploaded it called ‘best.friends.pic.jpg’ it breaks that name up to ‘best’, ‘friends’, ‘pic’, and ‘jpg’. Trust me, this is important (If you don’t understand how arrays work I recommend doing some research and learning).
The next line I use the count function. This will help in the event there is more than one ‘.’ in the name of the file being uploaded.
Now to create the new name of the file. $fileprefix equals the time of the upload. This works well, it will grab the time from the server and use it for the file name. Then it adds a ‘.’, then adds the suffix of the file (example: jpg)
Time to move the uploaded file. In my example I added the directory before the newly created file name. This will go back 1 directory and then to ‘img/‘.
Lastly, we use the ‘exit();‘ function. This is so that after the file has been uploaded the script stops. If you remove the function it will display the upload form again.

NOTE: There is a reason (although I don’t know it) on why there are 2 arrays. It seems to me that the first ($_FILES[‘thefile’][‘tmp_name’]) holds 2 parts, a pointer for ‘thefile‘ and the temp name php gives files before we do something with it, and the second ($_FILES[‘thefile’][‘name’]) contains the original name of the file.

btw, make sure apache has full access to the folder you are uploading images to.
For example, if this is on your own server check /etc/apache.conf (or httpd.conf) for the user and group apache runs under. This is usually either ‘nobody‘ or ‘apache‘.
If you have SSH into your server (or are sitting infront of it) goto the directory your files are being sent to and type

chown apache.apache img/ -R

This will give both user and group ‘apache‘ access to write files.

p.s. I will be creating another script here that deals with multiple picture uploads.