Question

As far as I know, PHP stores all uploaded files in upload_tmp_dir (or the systems default tmp dir, if upload_tmp_dir is not set in the php.ini file).

Then the usual method is to move that file to another place using move_uploaded_file

My question is: Is there a way to to retrieve the file in a variable? So it does not need to be stored on the file system at any time?

Reasons are, that I don’t have to clean up the files afterwards and don’t have to care about file system permissions.

Answer 1

$contents = file_get_contents($_FILES['name']['tmp_name']);

It is generally safe to leave the temporary file as it is, PHP will take care to delete it at the end of the request (unless PHP crashes hard during your script).