Why would FILES be empty when uploading files to PHP

Question

I have WampServer 2 installed on my Windows 7 computer  I m using Apache 2 2 11 and PHP 5 2 11  When I attempt to upload any file from a form  it seems to upload  but in PHP  the   FILES array is empty  There is no file in the c  wamp tmp folder  I have configured php ini to allow file uploads and such  The tmp folder has read write privileges for the current user  I m stumped   HTML    lt html gt   lt head gt       lt meta http-equiv  Content-Type  content  text html  charset utf-8    gt   lt  head gt   lt body gt       lt form enctype  multipart form-data  action  vanilla-upload php  method  POST  gt          Choose a file to upload   lt input name  uploadedfile  type  file    gt  lt br   gt           lt input type  submit  value  Upload File    gt       lt  form gt   lt  body gt   lt  html gt    PHP    lt  php echo  file count    count   FILES    n   var dump   FILES   echo   n     gt

User · Answer

Do not trust the temp folder location provided by `sys_get_temp_dir` if you're in a shared hosting environment.

Here is one more thing to check that has not yet been mentioned...

I assumed, naturally, that the folder where my PHP script stored temporary file uploads was /tmp. This belief was reinforced by the fact that echo sys_get_temp_dir() . PHP_EOL; returns/tmp. Also, echo ini_get('upload_tmp_dir'); returns nothing.

To verify that the uploaded file does in fact briefly appear in my /tmp folder, I added a sleep(30); statement to my script (as suggested here) and navigated to my /tmp folder in cPanel File Manager to locate the file. However, no matter what, the uploaded file was nowhere to be found there.

I spent hours trying to determine the reason for this, and implemented every suggestion that's been offered here.

Finally, after searching my website files for the query tmp, I discovered that my site contained other folders named tmp in different directories. I realized that my PHP script was actually writing the uploaded files to .cagefs/tmp. (The "Show Hidden Files" setting must be enabled in cPanel in order to view this folder.)

So, why does the sys_get_temp_dir function return inaccurate info?

Here's an explanation from the PHP.net webpage for sys_get_temp_dir (i.e., the top comment):

If running on a Linux system where systemd has PrivateTmp=true (which is the default on CentOS 7 and perhaps other newer distros), this function will simply return "/tmp", not the true, much longer, somewhat dynamic path.

This SO post delves into the issue, as well:

Stack Overflow: sys_get_temp_dir in shared hosting environment

User · Answer

Detach your form form the page you-re using into a simple php page that has the form and php code only  and test it like that  Any bootstrap or java script might clean out the  FILES    That was my case

User · Answer

I ran into the same issue and found that it was my IDE was part of the issue   I was launching the debugger directly from the IDE  PHPStorm  instead of just using the browser directly  The IDE spawned URL was like this       localhost 63342 CB Upload index php  ijt j2hcbacqepj87bvg66ncuohvne    and just using       localhost CB Upload index php    worked just fine    My set up is PC   Windows 10   WAMPSERVER 3 0 6 64bit

User · Answer

As far as the HTML you appear to have set that part up correctly  You already have the enctype  multipart form-data  which is very important to have on the form   As far as your php ini setup  sometimes on systems multiple php ini files exist  Be sure you are editing the correct one  I know you said you have configured your php ini file to have file uploads  but did you also set your upload max filesize and post max size to be larger than the file you are trying to upload  So you should have   file uploads   On  sounds like you already did this post max size   8M  change this higher if needed upload max filesize   8M  change this higher if needed   Does your directory   c  wamp tmp  have both read and write permissions  Did you remember to restart Apache after you made the php ini changes

User · Answer

I have a same problem looking 2 hours  is very simple to we check our server configuration first    Example   echo  upload max size   ini get  upload max filesize      echo  post max size ini get  post max size         any type of file size is  20mb  but our upload max size is above 20mb but array is null  Answer is our post max size should be greater than  upload max filesize  post max size   750M   upload max filesize   750M

User · Answer

I was empty   FILES because after  lt form enctype  multipart form-data  method  post  gt  i placed    lt  div gt   lt div style  clear both  gt  lt  div gt    Initial code was like    lt span class  span left  gt Photos  gif jpg jpeg png   lt  span gt   lt form enctype  multipart form-data  method  post  gt   lt input name  files    type  file  id  upload file    gt   lt input type  button  id  upload  value  Upload photo    gt   lt  form gt    I decided to modify and    lt div gt   lt span class  span left  gt Photos  gif jpg jpeg png   lt  span gt   lt form enctype  multipart form-data  method  post  gt   lt  div gt   lt div style  clear both  gt  lt  div gt   lt input name  files    type  file  id  upload file    gt   lt input type  button  id  upload  value  Upload photo    gt   lt  form gt   lt div style  clear both  gt  lt  div gt    So conclusion is that after  lt form enctype  multipart form-data  method  post  gt  must be  lt input name  type  id and must not be  lt div gt  or some other tags  In my situation correct code was     lt div gt   lt span class  span left  gt Photos  gif jpg jpeg png   lt  span gt   lt  div gt   lt div style  clear both  gt  lt  div gt   lt form enctype  multipart form-data  method  post  gt   lt input name  files    type  file  id  upload file    gt   lt input type  button  id  upload  value  Upload photo    gt   lt  form gt   lt div style  clear both  gt  lt  div gt

User · Answer

I too had problems with   FILES empty  The above check-list do not mention MultiViews in  htaccess  httpd conf or httpd-vhost conf   If you have MultiViews set in the options directive for your directory containing the web site    FILES will be empty  even though Content-Length header if showing that the file i uploaded

User · Answer

If you are trying to upload an array of files then you may need to increase max file uploads in php ini which is by default set to 20  Note  max file uploads can NOT be changed outside php ini  See PHP  Bug   50684

User · Answer

No one mentioned this but it helped me out and not many places on the net mention it   Make sure your php ini sets the following key       upload tmp dir   path to some tmp folder    You ll need to check with your webhost if they want you to use an absolute server file path   You should be able to see other directory examples in your php ini file to determine this   As soon as I set it I got values in my  FILES object   Finally make sure that your tmp folder and wherever you are moving files to have the correct permissions so that they can be read and written to

User · Answer

I had similar problem and the issue was in wrong value in htaccess as shamittomar mentioned   Change php value post max size 10MB to php value post max size 10M

User · Answer

Another possible culprit is apache redirects   In my case I had apache s httpd conf set up to redirect certain pages on our site to http versions  and other pages to https versions of the page  if they weren t already   The page on which I had a form with a file input was one of the pages configured to force ssl  but the page designated as the action of the form was configured to be http   So the page would submit the upload to the ssl version of the action page  but apache was redirecting it to the http version of the page and the post data  including the uploaded file was lost

User · Answer

It is important to add enctype  multipart form-data  to your form  example   lt form action  upload php  method  post  enctype  multipart form-data  gt      Select image to upload       lt input type  file  name  fileToUpload  id  fileToUpload  gt       lt input type  submit  value  Upload Image  name  submit  gt   lt  form gt

User · Answer

Make sure your input element has a  name  attribute   lt input type  file  name  uploadedfile    gt   If this is missing the   FILES will be empty

User · Answer

Here s a check-list for file uploading in PHP    Check php ini for  file uploads   On post max size   100M upload max filesize   100M   You might need to use  htaccess or  user ini if you are on shared hosting and don t have access to php ini  Make sure you   re editing the correct ini file     use the phpinfo   function to verify your settings are actually being applied   Also make sure you don   t misspell the sizes - it should be 100M not 100MB   Make sure your  lt form gt  tag has the enctype  multipart form-data  attribute  No other tag will work  it has to be your FORM tag  Double check that it is spelled correctly  Double check that multipart form-data is surrounded by STRAIGHT QUOTES  not smart quotes pasted in from Word OR from a website blog  WordPress converts straight quotes to angle quotes    If you have multiple forms on the page  make sure they both have this attribute  Type them in manually  or try straight single quotes typed in manually  Make sure you do not have two input file fields with the same name attribute   If you need to support multiple  put square brackets at the end of the name    lt input type  file  name  files    gt   lt input type  file  name  files    gt   Make sure your tmp and upload directories have the correct read write permissions set   The temporary upload folder is specified in PHP settings as upload tmp dir  Make sure your file destination and tmp upload directories do not have spaces in them  Make sure all  lt form gt  s on your page have  lt  form gt  close tags  Make sure your FORM tag has method  POST   GET requests do not support multipart form-data uploads  Make sure your file input tag has a NAME attribute  An ID attribute is NOT sufficient  ID attributes are for use in the DOM  not for POST payloads  Make sure you are not using Javascript to disable your  lt input type  file  gt  field on submission Make sure you re not nesting forms like  lt form gt  lt form gt  lt  form gt  lt  form gt  Check your HTML structure for invalid overlapping tags like  lt div gt  lt form gt  lt  div gt  lt  form gt  Also make sure that the file you are uploading does not have any non-alphanumeric characters in it  Once  I just spent hours trying to figure out why this was happening to me all of a sudden  It turned out that I had modified some of the PHP settings in  htaccess  and one of them  not sure which yet  was causing the upload to fail and   FILES to be empty  You could potentially try avoiding underscores     in the name    attribute of the  lt input gt  tag Try uploading very small files to narrow down whether it s a file-size issue  Check your available disk space  Although very rare  it is mentioned in this PHP Manual page comment      If the   FILES array suddenly goes mysteriously empty  even though your form seems correct  you should check the disk space available for your temporary folder partition  In my installation  all file uploads failed without warning  After much gnashing of teeth  I tried freeing up additional space  after which file uploads suddenly worked again   Be sure that you re not submitting the form through an AJAX POST request instead of a normal POST request that causes a page to reload  I went through each and every point in the list above  and finally found out that the reason due to which my   FILES variable was empty was that I was submitting the form using an AJAX POST request  I know that there are methods to upload files using ajax too  but this could be a valid reason why your   FILES array is empty    Source for some of these points  http   getluky net 2004 10 04 apachephp- files-array-mysteriously-empty

User · Answer

If your main script is http   Some long URL index php be carefull to specify the full URL  with explicit index php and not only http   Some long URL  in the action field  Surprisingly  if not  the right script is executed  but with en empty   FILES

User · Answer

If you are using JQuery Mobile  Using a multipart form with a file input is not supported by Ajax  In this case you should decorate the parent form with data-ajax  false  to ensure the form is submitted properly to the server    lt form action  upload php  method  post  enctype  multipart form-data   data-ajax  false  gt      Select image to upload       lt input type  file  name  fileToUpload  id  fileToUpload  gt       lt input type  submit  value  Upload Image  name  submit  gt   lt  form gt

User · Answer

Here another cause I found   When using JQuery Mobile and the form attribute data-ajax is set to true  the FILES array will be empty  So set data-ajax to false

User · Answer

I was struggling with the same problem and testing everything  not getting error reporting and nothing seemed to be wrong  I had error reporting E ALL   But suddenly I realized that I had not checked the apache log and voil    There was a syntax error on the script      a missing        So  even though this is something evident to be checked  it can be forgotten    In my case  linux  it is at    var log apache2 error log

User · Answer

Check your php ini for enable post data reading On   because      Disabling this option causes   POST and   FILES not to be populated  The only way to read postdata will then be through the php   input stream wrapper           In http   php net manual en ini core php ini enable-post-data-reading

User · Answer

I got the same problem and none of theme was my error  Check in your  htaccess file  if you got one  if  MultiViews  are enabled  I had to disable them

User · Answer

Thank you everybody for the vary comprehensive replies  Those are all very helpful  The answer turned out to be something very odd  It turns out that PHP 5 2 11 doesn t like the following   post max size   2G   or   post max size   2048M   If I change it to 2047M  the upload works

[php] Why would $_FILES be empty when uploading files to PHP?

Do not trust the temp folder location provided by `sys_get_temp_dir` if you're in a shared hosting environment.

Examples related to php

Examples related to apache

Examples related to file-upload

[php] Why would $_FILES be empty when uploading files to PHP?

Do not trust the temp folder location provided by sys_get_temp_dir if you're in a shared hosting environment.

Examples related to php

Examples related to apache

Examples related to file-upload

Do not trust the temp folder location provided by `sys_get_temp_dir` if you're in a shared hosting environment.