File Upload using an array variable

*SneakyDave* · 12-06-1999, 08:34 PM

Say I use a FORM that has the ability to upload 5 files at a time.

From this informative page at the PHP site:
http://www.php.net/manual/html/feature-fileupload.html

It says I can extract the name as $userfile_name, and size as $userfile_size, which is pretty handy.

But what if the 5 files I'm uploading are described using an array, say something like:

Code Sample:

 

<INPUT NAME=&quot;file[]&quot; TYPE=&quot;file&quot; size=50>

How would I access the name and size, because using something like $file[1]_name and $file[1]_size doesn't work.

Thanks for any help.

Justin · 12-06-1999, 08:50 PM

I'm not sure if this will work, but if it does allow the array, use $userfile_name[1] and so on.

If that doesn't work, I'm guessing PHP won't do multiple file uploads simultaneously - something I never thought about. One of my current projects processes up to 10 simultanous uploads, but uses Perl (and does *not* use any libraries for upload processing

)...

The PHP idea *might* work, but I'm not sure - you should be able to process the uploads manually as you would in Perl (bypassing the built-in method) but explaining how to do so would take a while (took me a long time and lots of trial/error to figure it out in Perl).

Hope this helps.

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

Justin · 12-06-1999, 08:56 PM

DOH! Now that I think about it... don't use the same variable name on all of them - $userfile is just the example they use on PHP.Net

</font><font face="Courier" size="3"><input type=file name=File1>
<input type=file name=File2></font><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">

And so on - then you would use $File1_size etc

Hope this helps.

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support

*SneakyDave* · 12-06-1999, 08:58 PM

Well, from a little testing, PHP doesn't even like you to use an array to store the file names. After writing a bunch of code that I thought was going to work (using the idea you mentioned and not getting any errors), I realized that the array was empty!

So that didn't work. I suppose I could try to use a loop with variable $x to name each INPUT TYPE=FILE as "file$x".
And then process each variable using another loop to extract the "file$x_name" and "$file$x_size" values.

I'll have to do some reading to figure out how exactly to get that to work.

Thanks Justin!

*SneakyDave* · 12-06-1999, 09:00 PM

Just as an FYI for other people, you can do simultaneous uploads with PHP, but I've only got it to work if the INPUT fields are named differently:

Code Sample:

 

<INPUT TYPE=FILE NAME=FILE1 TYPE=FILE>

<INPUT TYPE=FILE NAME=FILE2 TYPE=FILE>

*SneakyDave* · 12-06-1999, 09:01 PM

Hey Justin, I must have just missed you!

Like you said, yes, you can do multiple files, but PHP doesn't like you putting them in arrays.

I'll work on using what you and I just suggested, and then coding a loop that will parse the correct variable I want to use in a loop, ie. "$file$x".

*SneakyDave* · 12-06-1999, 09:27 PM

Well, I think I almost have it working, using the above code for the form, and something like this for processing:

Code Sample:

 

    $x=1;

    eval('$name = $file'.$x.'_name;');

    eval('$size = $file'.$x.'_size;');

    eval('$type = $file'.$x.'_type;');

    while($name)

    {

      whatever it is you want to do with $name, $type, and $size



      $x++;

      eval('$name = $file'.$x.'_name;');

      eval('$size = $file'.$x.'_size;');

      eval('$type = $file'.$x.'_type;');

    }

[This message has been edited by SneakyDave (edited 12-06-99)]