Question

I’m using PHP to upload an image from a form to the server and want to rename the image lastname_firstname.[original extension]. I currently have:

move_uploaded_file($_FILES["picture"]["tmp_name"], "peopleimages/" . "$_POST[lastname]" . '_' . "$_POST[firstname]")

which, of course, renames the file lastname_firstname without an extension. How do I rename the file but keep the extension?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to first find out what the original extension was 😉

To do that, the pathinfo function can do wonders 😉

Quoting the example that’s given in the manual :

$path_parts = pathinfo('/www/htdocs/index.html');
echo $path_parts['dirname'], "\n";
echo $path_parts['basename'], "\n";
echo $path_parts['extension'], "\n";
echo $path_parts['filename'], "\n"; // since PHP 5.2.0

Will give you :

/www/htdocs
index.html
html
index

As a sidenote, don’t forget about security :

• In your case, you should escape $_POST[lastname], to make sure it only contains valid characters
  • And, BTW, you should use $_POST['lastname'] — see Why is $foo[bar] wrong?
• You should also check that the file is an image
  • See mime_content_type for PHP < 5.3
  • And/or finfo_file for PHP >= 5.3