Question

I am having trouble with unlink in php… The files in the directory are uploaded with php form.

ls -l of /files/uploads/

total 6976
-rw-r--r--  1 alex  admin   689030 15 Aug 11:40 01805_goneclubbing_1680x1050.jpg
-rwxrwxrwx  1 alex  admin   174932 15 Aug 11:52 4vvF60D.tmp.jpg
-rw-r--r--  1 alex  admin  2699554 15 Aug 12:16 example.JPG

php script (cakePHP framework):

$file_path = '/files/uploads/';
    $file_name = $file['Upload']['path'];

    $classroom_id = $file['Upload']['classroom_id'];

        if (unlink($file_path . $file_name)) {

            if ($this->Upload->delete($id)) {
                $this->setFlash('File deleted');
                $this->redirect(array('controller' => 'classrooms', 'action' => 'view', $classroom_id));
            }

        }

php error:

Warning (2): unlink(/files/uploads/example.JPG) [function.unlink]: No such file or directory [APP/controllers/uploads_controller.php, line 55]

I searched on stackoverflow, tried giving 777 permissions and still not working. I can access the image through the browser at that path.

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

On any UNIX system, / is your system root. So when you try to access /files, you try to access a folder files located at your system root. I think you want to access /path_to_www/files, so either use a variable which stores your base path or use a relative path.

On the other hand, when you try to access /files from your web browser, it reaches the / of your web directory (or an alias path). So it is totally normal that you can access your image from your browser but not from php.