PHP - Convert File system path to URL

Question

I often find that I have files in my projects that need to be accessed from the file system as well as the users browser. One example is uploading photos. I need access to t

Answer 1

The code below is well commented:

function pathToURL($path) {
  //Replace backslashes to slashes if exists, because no URL use backslashes
  $path = str_replace("\\", "/", realpath($path));

  //if the $path does not contain the document root in it, then it is not reachable
  $pos = strpos($path, $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']);
  if ($pos === false) return false;

  //just cut the DOCUMENT_ROOT part of the $path
  return substr($path, strlen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']));
  //Note: usually /images is the same with http://somedomain.com/images,
  //      So let's not bother adding domain name here.
}
echo pathToURL('some/path/on/public/html');