PHP Uploaded file not going where I want it to

Question

I have a php script that I wrote with a lot of help from internet and I do not fully understand what is going on. It is an upload tool which is supposed to send files uploaded to my website in a folder on the server called uploads. It works perfectly well when I use xampp, but when I run it on a remote server, that my university provided me, the script saves the files in its root folder, instead of sending them in the "uploads" folder that I created there.

I tried specifying the directory in different ways, but since it works on my computer and doesn't on the university server I got no idea what to do. The university server works with apache2 and on my computer I used the latest version of xampp for local testing.

index.html and upload.php are in the same folder and there is a subfolder called "uploads" on both of the computers.

<?php
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
    $file = $_FILES['file'];

    $fileName = $_FILES['file']['name'];
    $fileTmpName = $_FILES['file']['tmp_name'];
    $fileSize = $_FILES['file']['size'];
    $fileError = $_FILES['file']['error'];
    $fileType = $_FILES['file']['type'];

    $fileExt=explode('.', $fileName);
    $fileActualExt = strtolower(end($fileExt));

    $allowed = array('cvs');

    if(in_array($fileActualExt, $allowed)) {
        if($fileError === 0){
            if($fileSize < 100000){
                $fileNameNew = uniqid('', true).".".$fileActualExt;
                $fileDestination = 'uploads/'.$fileNameNew;
                move_uploaded_file($fileTmpName, $fileDestination);
                header("Location: index.php?uploadsuccess");
            } else {
                echo "Your file is too big!";
            } 
        } else {
            echo "There was an error uploading your file!";
        }
    } else {
        echo "You cannot upload files of this type!";
    }
}
?>

I expected the files to be in uploads, but they go in the same folder as the script instead.

Did you allocate the correct privileges to the account that your web server is running under www maybe to the folder you created — RiggsFolly
– RiggsFolly, Commented Jun 6, 2019 at 17:03

ARubiksCube · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-06 17:06:44Z

1

Try adding __DIR__ before the file path:

$fileDestination = __DIR__.'/uploads/'.$fileNameNew;

This should work if the "uploads" folder and upload.php file are in the same location. Otherwise, you will have to modify the middle section of the assignment ('/uploads/') to navigate to the right directory.

Also, see this similar post with a similar problem

answered Jun 6, 2019 at 17:06

ARubiksCube

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2 Comments

Powerlord Over a year ago

This works because it's an absolute path. PHP has no guarantee that the current working directory (CWD) will be the directory that the running script is in; all relative paths are calculated from the CWD. __DIR__ is always the directory that the running script is in.

Powerlord Over a year ago

Well, to be more accurate, __DIR__ is the directory that the current file is in, which is important if it's being included in another script.

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