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

All answers here promotes str_replace() which replaces all occurences anywhere in the string, not just in the beginning. preg_replace() will make sure we only do an exact match from the beginning of the string:

function remove_path($file, $path = UPLOAD_PATH) {
  return preg_replace("#^($path)#", '', $file);
}

Windows can be a problem where directory separators / and \. Make sure you replace the directory separators first:

function remove_path($file, $path = UPLOAD_PATH) {
  $file = preg_replace("#([\\\\/]+)#", '/', $file);
  $path = preg_replace("#([\\\\/]+)#", '/', $path);
  return preg_replace("#^($path)#", '', $file);
}

I would play with something like the following. Make note of realpath() and rtrim().

function webpath($file) {
  $document_root = rtrim(preg_replace("#([\\\\/]+)#", '/', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']), '/');
  $file = preg_replace("#([\\\\/]+)#", '/', realpath($file));
  return preg_replace("#^($document_root)#", '', $file);
}

echo webpath(__FILE__); // Returns webpath to self
echo webpath('../file.ext'); // Relative paths
echo webpath('/full/path/to/file.ext'); // Full paths