Make Destination Directory on File upload with PHP

You normally store the user-selected files in a specific directory but the same directory is also used by all other users.

If you are allowing to upload multiple types of files like – images, videos, doc, etc then it becomes a mess.

To avoid this you can create separate directories to store files in an organized way.

But for storing it in a more organized way you can dynamically create directories for each user for storing their files. This makes traversing to file easier.

Make Destination Directory on File upload with PHP

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Table structure
Configuration
HTML & PHP
Output
Conclusion

1. Table structure

Create users table and added some records.

CREATE TABLE `users` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `username` varchar(80) NOT NULL,
  `name` varchar(80) NOT NULL,
  `password` varchar(80) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

2. Configuration

Create a config.php for the database connection.

Completed Code

<?php
$host = "localhost"; /* Host name */
$user = "root"; /* User */
$password = ""; /* Password */
$dbname = "tutorial"; /* Database name */

$con = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $password,$dbname);
// Check connection
if (!$con) {
  die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}

3. HTML & PHP

Create a new upload directory for storing files.

List records from the users table and add a <form method='post' action='' enctype='multipart/form-data' > following with the username which contains the file element and a submit button.

Create a directory and upload a file

I am using the username for the directory name. For this, I created a hidden element with username value in <form >.

On the form submit select the POST username and with mkdir() method creates a directory if it does not exist in the upload directory.

Completed Code

<?php
include "config.php";

if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
  if(isset($_POST['username']) && isset($_FILES['file']['name'])){
     # Username
     $username = $_POST['username'];

     # Get file name
     $filename = $_FILES['file']['name'];

     # Get File size
     $filesize = $_FILES['file']['size'];

     # Location
     $location = "upload/".$username;

     # create directory if not exists in upload/ directory
     if(!is_dir($location)){
       mkdir($location, 0755);
     }

     $location .= "/".$filename;

     # Upload file
     if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'],$location)){
        echo "File uploaded.";
     }
  }
}

?>

<!doctype html>
<html>
 <body >
 
 <!-- User list -->
 <table border='1'>
   <tr>
    <td>S.no</td>
    <td>Username</td>
    <td>&nbsp;</td>
   </tr>
   <?php

   $fetch_user = mysqli_query($con,"select * from users");
   $count = 1;
   while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($fetch_user)){
     $username = $row['username'];
   ?>

   <tr>
    <td><?= $count ?></td>
    <td><?= $username ?></td>
    <td>
     <!-- Form -->
     <form method='post' action='' enctype='multipart/form-data'>
      <input type='hidden' value='<?= $username ?>' name='username' >
      <input type="file" name="file" id="file" >
      <input type='submit' name='submit' value='Upload'>
     </form>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <?php
   $count++;
  }
  ?>
 </table>
 
 </body>
</html>

4. Output

View Output

5. Conclusion

Using the above script you can create a new directory if not exists dynamically using mkdir() and upload a file.

Specify your directory location in mkdir() function for creation.

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Contents

1. Table structure

2. Configuration

3. HTML & PHP

4. Output

5. Conclusion