Rename an uploaded file with PHP but keep the extension

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_upl         


        

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