Question

Hello for some reason I can’t get my program to see if my file is empty or not if something is selected it should not go through but it is. Here is the code

if (empty($_FILES['file'] ) )
    {
        echo "testing";
        $seterror =1;
        returnBack();

    } 

Answer 1

The language construct empty() and arrays in PHP do not mix well. In addition, if you have a <input type='file' name='file' /> in your form, you will get a $_FILES[] array. You should be doing if( !array_key_exists('file', $_FILES) ) { // no file uploaded } to start with.

In fact, you should be doing several checks:

• If the file element is populated in $_FILES
• If there is no error (that is, $_FILES['file']['error'] == 0)
• If there is a filename for the uploaded file’s temporary location
• If PHP believes it is an uploaded file and/or it can move it

Only of all of those are true will you have a file to process. Otherwise you don’t.

I’ve found following these steps religiously on a file upload handler to be thoroughly reliable.