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Tutorial On Uploading File With CodeIgniter Framework / PHP

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CodeIgniter Tutorials

File upload functionality is one of the most common requirements for most web applications. If we go for raw implementation, we would need to do some basic initialization manually, which makes the code redundant and time-consuming. This risks having buggy code. To recover from these issues and make our development life easier, the Codeigniter framework provides a decent and efficient way to do this. The Codeigniter file upload library is very simple to use and configurable. I will show a very basic implementation of this tutorial, which should help beginners adapt to this library quickly.

I am assuming you have used codeigniter more or less. If you are a complete beginner with Codeigniter, you should pursue some basic codeigniter knowledge with model/view/controller usage.

 

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Prepare the view:

First, we need to prepare a simple form view. This will be used for rendering the HTML to the user to allow file upload functionality. A simple HTML form with file upload support would be as follows:


<form action="" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data" >
    Select File To Upload:<br />
    <input type="file" name="userfile"  />
    <br /><br />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Upload" class="btn btn-success" />
</form&gt;
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Notice a few things in the above code example:

  • We have used ‘enctype’ attribute (which means ‘ENCode Type’) with a value of “multipart/form-data” in ‘form’ tag, which tells that, this form will contain a file upload control. You can check more about this enctype attribute on w3schools.
  • A file browser control is added by specifying type=’file’. This is the central control where the user will be able to select a file from his local computer. By default, the user will be able to select a single file. But if you wish to facilitate multiple files on your web application, you can additionally use “multiple=’multiple'” attribute in this tag. This will do the trick nicely.

Define A Configuration For Uploaded File:

Let us move to our server-side PHP codes. First, we will need to make a configuration array. This is an associative array defined by the Codeigniter file upload library for certain keys. This will include the basic settings for file upload, like upload path, maximum size, allowed file types, etc. You will need to initialize separate configurations if your web application has different forms to upload files with different criteria. Here is a basic configuration file structure. You should keep it in ‘application/config’ directory and load it when needed. Otherwise, you can keep it in your controller/library function also, depending on your application’s architecture:


$this->config =  array(
                  'upload_path'     => dirname($_SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"])."/files/",
                  'upload_url'      => base_url()."files/",
                  'allowed_types'   => "gif|jpg|png|jpeg|pdf|doc|xml",
                  'overwrite'       => TRUE,
                  'max_size'        => "1000KB",
                  'max_height'      => "768",
                  'max_width'       => "1024"
                );Code language: PHP (php)

You just need to be careful when setting these because errors may occur if we set this wrong. You will find that this is the most important part of the functionality.

CodeIgniter File Upload Library In Action:

After we have defined the configuration correctly, our task is straightforward. We will load the ‘upload’ library and call the ‘do_upload’ method. The code will be as follows inside your Codeigniter controller:

$this->load->library('upload', $this-&gt;config);
if($this->upload->do_upload())
{
    echo "file upload success";
}
else
{
   echo "file upload failed";
}Code language: PHP (php)

If an error occurs, you can show the messages that are generated by CodeIgniter itself, mentioning the main reason by using “display_errors()” function of the library. Also, after a successful upload, you can use various properties of the uploaded file from the object returned by this library’s ‘data()’ method. (This is demonstrated in detail in the demo example)

After a successful file upload demo exercise (as on the link below), you should see the result as follows:

codeigniter file upload tutorial

Uploading ZIP Files:

Uploading a zip file is similar to other types of files. However, you may face a little problem, as on the latest CodeIgniter version(2.1.3), not all mime types are declared. Follow the below steps to get it working if you are having issues:

Add more mime types: In your application/config/mimes.php file, add/edit the following types:

'zip'	=>  array('application/zip', 'application/x-zip', 'application/x-zip-compressed', 'application/octet-stream', 'application/x-compress', 'application/x-compressed', 'multipart/x-zip'),
				'rar'   => array('application/rar', 'application/x-rar', 'application/x-rar-compressed', 'application/x-compressed', 'application/octet-stream')Code language: PHP (php)

As you can see, all other mime types are checked against the file upload operation of that type and can be ignored if the correct types don’t exist. So keep your eye open while implementing the Codeigniter file upload operation.

Check Upload Configuration: Also, don’t forget to add these types on your upload configuration’s allowed types:

'allowed_types'   => "gif|jpg|png|jpeg|pdf|doc|xml|zip|rar",Code language: PHP (php)

Now you should be doing fine. Let me know if you still face problems with the zip file upload.

Essential Factors To Consider:

  • File/Directory Permission: You must ensure that PHP has proper write permission on those directories where you want the uploaded file to be saved. Generally, a ‘755’ or ‘777’ permission works fine.
  • Script Timeout Settings: If your application allows the big-size file to be uploaded, you need to ensure that your server’s PHP configuration allows enough time before resulting in a timeout error for file upload.
  • Proper Settings: Though I mentioned once already, again to say, proper settings are necessary. You need to understand and set them carefully. Such as, in the above example, we have used ‘max_height’ and ‘max_width’ properties, which are mainly for image-type files. So, if your application doesn’t allow image upload, you don’t need to use them.

Further References:

You should also read the official codeigniter documentation guide for file upload class to know n depth of the configuration details. It also provides detailed information on the uploaded file, which CodeIgniter preserves.

I hope this simple tutorial will help you get started with using the CodeIgniter file upload functionality. If you have a problem or have a question, feel free to ask me. Happy coding 🙂

About Rana Ahsan

Software engineer/Technology Enthusiast.
Github: ranacseruet

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. carlarrj says

    Hello, i’m trying using your code to upload one file to the server but i’m facing some problems, could you please help me out?

    Thanks in advance

    Reply

  2. carlarrj says

    Hello,

    Thanks for the quick reply. I’m a newbie and i’m using the upload script in http://www.timprexe.com/en/contatos/ but i’m having this error:
    Message: Undefined property: CI::$uploader
    Filename: MX/Controller.php
    Line Number: 58

    Just a few moments ago i get hover this error when i changed:
    $this->load->library(“uploader”);
    $this->uploader->do_upload();

    to

    $this->load->library(“upload”);
    $this->upload->do_upload();

    but couldn’t make the upload of the file and i just started again.

    Could you please help me? I have the uploader.php inside application\config http://pastebin.com/ehfZmq6X this is my controller http://pastebin.com/qZrZRV99 and this is my view http://pastebin.com/Vfv6LK4H

    Thanks in advance

    Reply

    • Md Ali Ahsan Rana says

      OK, first thing, your first code snippet was right according to my demo example. On later one, you just loaded the CI uploader instead of our custom uploader library, but didn’t perform other operations such as $config etc. Thus, its not working.

      My first suggestion will be to figure out why your can’t load the library ‘uploader’.

      I am assuming you have this “uploader.php” on your application/libraries directory, am I right? or is it in some subdirectory? Like if you have the library in “application/libraries/app/uploader.php” then, you should use “$this->load->library(‘app/uploader’)”;

      Also, is your development environment ‘case sensitive’? If so, it may looking for “Uploader.php” instead of “uploader.php”. so, make the change, name the file with upper case ‘U’ and try.

      If still facing error, let me know. Thanks.

      Reply

  4. karabo says

    Good Day

    Am trying out your tutorial. Am experiencing a problem with placing the config array in the the controller. I have a fill named upload.php, please give me an example where to upload the ‘config array’.

    Thanks for the tutorial

    Reply

    • Md Ali Ahsan Rana says

      Please change the php.ini for ‘upload_max_filesize = 25M’ and ‘post_max_size = 25M’ settings. Then, also change the upload config’s ‘max_size’ settings and make sure ‘allowed_types’ have ‘pdf’ type. Then you should be OK to go. Let me know if you still have any issue.

      Reply

  9. surya pratap singh says

    hello
    i am new in codeigniter so i want to upload image in these location
    upload->year->month->day
    if these folder already exixt so upload image if doesnt create and upload
    and last thing i want also sent id title and image path to data base
    i do lot of thing but not working is any one create
    view,controller and model

    Reply

  10. Ahbab says

    Can you plz give a full project which was developed using Codeigniter ? It will help us to see the whole environment of Codeigniter.

    Reply

  13. Ajay says

    Severity: Warning

    Message: pg_query(): Query failed: ERROR: null value in column “ImageNameWithExtension” violates not-null constraint DETAIL: Failing row contains (L , 16th, null, 12, 120, test, tsseet, test, test, 2015-04-02 18:53:18+05:30, 2015-04-02 18:53:18+05:30, 1, 894, 1).

    Filename: postgre/postgre_driver.php

    Line Number: 246

    Backtrace:

    File: C:\xampp\htdocs\iloksabha\application\models\Digitalasset_modal.php
    Line: 35
    Function: insert

    File: C:\xampp\htdocs\iloksabha\application\controllers\Digitalasset.php
    Line: 67
    Function: set_value

    File: C:\xampp\htdocs\iloksabha\index.php
    Line: 292
    Function: require_once

    please solution me..

    Reply

  17. sandeep says

    Array
    (
    [file] => Array
    (
    [name] => vlc-record.mp4
    [type] =>
    [tmp_name] =>
    [error] => 1
    [size] => 0
    )

    )

    i am getting the array like this while uploading video

    Reply

  18. rakesh ranjan says

    Dear writer i want to upload image in directory and save the path of image in database and i want to retrieve on another page can you help me please.

    Thanks in advance.

    Reply

  24. mahadevan says

    hai sir
    i have some problem in codeigniter
    i used one data from one table and then data to change some to store another table how to do it

    Reply

  25. Chin Cong says

    Hi sir
    I read your helps carefully.
    I also have a problem.

    <form action="Admin_con/verbose_upload” method=”POST” enctype=”multipart/form-data”>

    Adding Animal

    Name:

    Category:

    Image:

    Model:

    Latitude:

    Longitude:

    And in controller, Admin_con/verbose_upload method is…

    public function verbose_upload()
    {
    $this->config = array(
    ‘upload_path’ => dirname($_SERVER[“SCRIPT_FILENAME”]).”/files/”,
    ‘upload_url’ => base_url().”files/”,
    ‘allowed_types’ => “*”,
    ‘overwrite’ => TRUE,
    ‘max_size’ => “10000KB”
    );
    $this->load->library(‘upload’, $this->config);
    if($this->upload->do_upload())
    {
    echo “file upload success”;
    }
    else
    {
    echo “file upload fail”;
    }
    }

    But result is

    file upload fail

    I dont know what ‘s the matter.
    I will wait your help.
    Best Regards~

    Reply

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