Question

I am working on a PHP upload script and when testing my error checks, I attempted to upload a 17MB TIFF file. When I do this the $_FILES array is empty. The script works fine for what I need it to do, which is to upload JPEG files. My solution is to test if $_FILES is empty or not before continuing with the upload script.

Can anybody explain why $_FILES is empty when a TIFF is attempted to be uploaded? Is my solution, to check if $_FILES is empty or not, an okay one?

Does this have something to do with settings in php.ini?

Just to clarify

I was checking that $_FILES was empty using the following:

if(empty($_FILES))
{
    die('$_FILES is empty.');
}

Answer 1

Yes, upload_max_filesize controls max upload size, which the TIFF file most likely exceeded. The default is 2M. You can test with:

echo ini_get("upload_max_filesize");

EDIT: Actually, the exact cause is more likely post_max_size, which is always >= upload_max_filesize: “If the size of post data is greater than post_max_size, the $_POST and $_FILES superglobals are empty.”