Handling File Uploads

Abstract

While most people tend to equate the Web with Web pages only, HTTP actually facilitates the transfer of any kind of file, such as Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, executables, MPEGs, zip files, and a wide range of other file types. Although FTP historically has been the standard means for uploading files to a server, such file transfers are becoming increasingly prevalent via a Web-based interface. In this chapter, you’ll learn all about PHP’s file-upload handling capabilities, in particular, the following:

• PHP’s file-upload configuration directives

• PHP’s $_FILES superglobal array, used to handle file-upload data

• PHP’s built-in file-upload functions: is_uploaded_file() andmove_uploaded_file()

• A review of possible error messages returned from an upload script

• An overview of the HTTPJJpload PEAR package