PHP Questions

A PHP Session persist the user information to be used later. For example, user name, password, shopping item details. The session is temporary and will be removed soon after the user has left the web site. The session can be persisted for long term usage on databases like MySQL. Each session is identified by a unique Id number for every visitor. The first step to use PHP session is to start the session. The starting session must precede the operations like HTML or the other.

The statement session_start() starts the PHP session and registers the user’s information on the server.

Copy() makes a copy of the file. It returns TRUE on success. It can copy from any source to destination. Move simply Moves the file to destination if the file is valid. While move can move the uploaded file from temp server location to any destination on the server. If filename is a valid upload file, but cannot be moved for some reason, no action will occur.

A session is a logical object created by the PHP engine to allow you to preserve data across subsequent HTTP requests. Sessions are commonly used to store temporary data to allow multiple PHP pages to offer a complete functional transaction for the same visitor.

A HTML form should be build before uploading the file. The following HTML code is used for selecting the file that is to be uploaded. The type attribute of input must be “file”.

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="uploader.php" method="POST">

<input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="100000" />

Choose a file to upload: <input name="uploadedfile" type="file" /><br />

<input type="submit" value="Upload File" />

</form>

At the time of executing uploader.php, the uploaded file will be stored in a temporary storage are on the webserver. An associative array $_FILES['uploadedfile']['name'] is used for uploading. The ‘name’ is the original file that is to be uploaded. Another associative array $_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'] is used for placing the uploaded file in a temporary location on the server and the file should be empty and should exist with the tmp_name.

The following code snippet is used for uploading the file.

$target_path = "uploads/"; // the target location of the file

$target_path = $target_path . basename( $_FILES['uploadedfile']['name']);

if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name'], $target_path)) 

{

       echo "The file ". basename( $_FILES['uploadedfile']['name']). 

        " has been uploaded";

}

else

{

      echo “There was an error while uploading the file”;

}

The function move_uploaded_file()is used to place the source file into the destination folder, which resides on the server.

If the uploading is successful, the message “The file filename has been uploaded. Otherwise the error message “There was an error while uploading the file” would be displayed.