Question

I need to retrieve form values to insert.php file in order to store them in the database. However one of the elements in the form is a file chooser dialog to upload an image file in JPG or other file format.

I found this code online to send the image via a post request, but cannot get it to work correctly

$pic=($_FILES['photo'][image']); 

It only displays the name of the file and not the actual file itself

Answer 1

First of all you need to add the enctype attribute to your HTML form. Like this:

<form action="page.php" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input type="file" name="photo" id="photo" />
    <input type="submit" value="Upload" />
</form>

Next, when this will be sent on the next page use the $_FILES global array instead of the $_POST array to retrieve the image.

<?php
    move_uploaded_file( $_FILES['photo']['tmp_name'], "/var/www/image.jpg" );
    echo("<img src='image.jpg'");
?>

All text data will be sent using $_POST but the file will be transferred using $_FILES.

Edit: If you further want to insert this uploaded data in the table (although this is never recommended and is a huge performance loss)

$image = file_get_contents( "/var/www/image.jpg" );
$image = addslashes( $image );
...
$sql = "INSERT INTO pictures(image) VALUES('" . $image . "')";
//remaining MySQL and PHP code

Note: Here I am considering /var/www as my web folder which is configured as default localhost on Linux machines.