How can I get the URL of each uploaded file and send through email?

Question

OVERVIEW: I have a form that includes 5 file upload fields. A php script processes the data and sends out 2 emails (one to the admin and a confirmation receipt to the user) AND appends the data to a .csv file on the server.

QUESTION: How do I get the URL of the uploaded files in to a variable that I can use to populate the email and .csv file.

Everything is working great except I need a link to each of the the uploaded files included in the emails and in the .csv file. I cannot seem to figure that part out after a couple days of trying.

SIMPLIFIED HTML FORM:

<HTML><head><title>MultiFile Upload and Send Email</title></head><body>         
<form method='post' action='php/multiUploadTestProcess.php' multipart='' enctype='multipart/form-data'>
    <label for ='exhName'>Exhibitor Name:</label>
    <input type='text' name='exhName' multiple class='form-control'><br><br>
    Select File 1: <input type='file' name='img[]' multiple class='form-control' size='10'><br><br>
    Select File 2: <input type='file' name='img[]' multiple class='form-control' size='10'><br><br>
    Select File 3: <input type='file' name='img[]' multiple class='form-control' size='10'><br><br>
    Select File 4: <input type='file' name='img[]' multiple class='form-control' size='10'><br><br>
    Select File 5: <input type='file' name='img[]' multiple class='form-control' size='10'><br><br>
    <input type='submit' value='upload'>
</form>

THE PHP: NOTE: I've removed all the validation/sanitizing, removed .csv appending, and the second email submission. I'm assuming once we can get the links in to one email the rest will be pretty much the same.

<?php
$exhName = $_POST['exhName'];
$exhNameNoSpace = str_replace(" ","-", $exhName);
$img = $_FILES['img'];
$to = 'DESTINATION-EMAIL@DOMAIN.com';
$subject = 'New File Uploads';
$email = 'ReplyYToEMAIL@DOMAIN.com';

if(!empty($img))
{
    /* reArrayFiles changes the array pattern for PHP's $_FILES (see function at end)  */
    $img_desc = reArrayFiles($img);
    print_r($img_desc);

    /* RENAME EACH FILE to current date, exhibitor name w/o spaces, and random integer string (ensuring no file overwrites). Then MOVE FILE to uploads */
    foreach($img_desc as $val)
    {
        $newname = date('m-d-Y',time()).'-'.$exhNameNoSpace.'-'.mt_rand().'.jpg';
        move_uploaded_file($val['tmp_name'],'../uploads/'.$newname);
        /* THIS FOLLOWING LINE WAS MY ATTEMPT AT GETTING A LINK TO EACH UPLOADED FILE BUT IS NOT WORKING. AND THE VARIABLE $newname HERE IS ADDING A NEW RANDOM INT TO THE FILENAME - NOT THE ONE THE FILE WAS SAVED WITH. */
        $filePath = '**Full Path To Directory**'.$newname;
    }
    /* SEND EMAIL TO ADMIN */
            $emailText = "=============================================\nYou have a new Market Place Application\n".
            "Here are the details:\n=============================================\n\n Exhibitor Name: $exhName \n\n Upload File 1: $filePath \n\n Upload File 2: $filePath \n\n ###";

            // All the neccessary headers for the email.
            $headers = array('Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8";',
                'From: ' . $email,
                'Reply-To: ' . $email,
                'Return-Path: ' . $email,
            );
            $emailText = wordwrap($emailText, 70);
            // Send email
            mail($to, $subject, $emailText, implode("\n", $headers));
    /* END SEND EMAIL TO ADMIN */
}
function reArrayFiles($file)
{
    $file_ary = array();
    $file_count = count($file['name']);
    $file_key = array_keys($file);

    for($i=0;$i<$file_count;$i++)
    {
        foreach($file_key as $val)
        {
            $file_ary[$i][$val] = $file[$val][$i];
        }
    }
    return $file_ary;
}   
?>

Help is greatly appreciated!

Alexey · Answer 1 · 2018-11-16T22:08:24.157

1

If you want to attach the file to your emails, you may need the fullpath on the server rather than external URL. Have a look at realpath PHP function and try to wrap the path you saved the file into this function call, so making it something like:

$newname = date('m-d-Y',time()).'-'.$exhNameNoSpace.'-'.mt_rand().'.jpg';
move_uploaded_file($val['tmp_name'],'../uploads/'.$newname);
/* THIS FOLLOWING LINE WAS MY ATTEMPT AT GETTING A LINK TO EACH UPLOADED FILE BUT IS NOT WORKING. AND THE VARIABLE $newname HERE IS ADDING A NEW RANDOM INT TO THE FILENAME - NOT THE ONE THE FILE WAS SAVED WITH. */
$filePath = realpath('../uploads/'.$newname);

after this $filepath should contain the full path to the uploaded file on the server.

If you wish to add a link with an external URL into your mails, you really need the full URL, but it depends on the domain name and the location of uploads folder relatively to the root (/) of your domain. It should be something like http://example.com/uploads/11-16-2018-name-6534.jpg and you can figure it out by testing the access to the generated filenames via your browser, assuming your uploads folder is accessible through the webserver. Once you figure out the URL you may either save the domain and path into your config file or you may check if $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] contains the domain name and append it with the path then.

In order to use the URLs in the email text you need to modify your code like:

$emailText = "=============================================\nYou have a new Market Place Application\nHere are the details:\n=============================================\n\n Exhibitor Name: $exhName \n\n ";
$i = 1;
foreach($img_desc as $val)
{
    $newname = date('m-d-Y',time()).'-'.$exhNameNoSpace.'-'.mt_rand().'.jpg';
    move_uploaded_file($val['tmp_name'],'../uploads/'.$newname);
    /* THIS FOLLOWING LINE WAS MY ATTEMPT AT GETTING A LINK TO EACH UPLOADED FILE BUT IS NOT WORKING. AND THE VARIABLE $newname HERE IS ADDING A NEW RANDOM INT TO THE FILENAME - NOT THE ONE THE FILE WAS SAVED WITH. */
    $filePath = '**Full Path To Directory**'.$newname;
    $emailText .= "Upload File " . $i . ": " . $filePath . "\n\n";
    $i++;
}

// All the neccessary headers for the email.
$headers = array('Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8";',
            'From: ' . $email,
            'Reply-To: ' . $email,
            'Return-Path: ' . $email,
);
$emailText = wordwrap($emailText, 70);
// Send email
mail($to, $subject, $emailText, implode("\n", $headers));

edited Nov 16 '18 at 22:08

answered Nov 16 '18 at 19:47

Alexey

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Thank you for the response! I looked in to realPath and tried your solution above. At first is did not return anything, then I changed this line: '$filePath = realpath('../uploads/'.$newname);' to '$filePath = realpath('../uploads/').$newname;' and it did return the path to the file. However – reciprocityFailure Nov 16 '18 at 20:37
so is that what you expected? It wasn't really clear in your question if you wanted the path on the server or the public URL of the file – Alexey Nov 16 '18 at 20:38
Thank you for response! Tried your solution. At first it did not return anything, then I changed this line: '$filePath = realpath('../uploads/'.$newname);' to '$filePath = realpath('../uploads/').$newname;' which returned path to the file. However, the file name returned contained a different rndm string than actual file. Also returned the same file name for each file, not the individual names. Looking to have public URL of files included in emails & .csv. Public URL is not an issue, returning the file name for each of the files is problem I can't seem to fix. – reciprocityFailure Nov 16 '18 at 20:49
if you dump `realpath('../uploads/').$newname` inside the `foreach` loop you should see different filenames and all of them should be correct – Alexey Nov 16 '18 at 20:53
OK, I think we're getting close. I added `var_dump($filePath);` within the loop and `print_r($filePath);` after the loop which did display the true uploaded filenames. But I do not know how to get each individual filename from the dump in to the email body. – reciprocityFailure Nov 16 '18 at 21:19
that's another question and you can check here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12301358/send-attachments-with-php-mail , where it's stated you should use PHPMailer or similar lib (SwiftMailer as another example) to easily add attachments to your emails. It's not that easy (though possible) to achive this with `mail` PHP native function – Alexey Nov 16 '18 at 21:27
Thank you for getting me this far. But, how to get the URL to each uploaded file included in the email was my question. I do not need / want the files attached, just the URL to download each one. – reciprocityFailure Nov 16 '18 at 21:34
that was my question to you, see p.2 in my answer. It depends on the location of uploads folder and your domain name – Alexey Nov 16 '18 at 21:38
Hey, yes, I can easily get that info in to the email. Getting the path part of the URL in to the email is no problem. Just need to know how to list the individual filenames in the email. I'm not sure how to extract them from the var_dump. – reciprocityFailure Nov 16 '18 at 21:58
you don't need the `var_dump` when adding a string to your email. Initialize your `$emailText` variable before the `foreach` loop with `You have a new application` string and then inside the loop append it with another string like 'Upload file' . $filePath . ' ; '; See the updated answer – Alexey Nov 16 '18 at 22:05
You ROCK!!! Thank you. A quick test and your answer worked great for me. Thank you so much. I'm going to review and learn what you did here. I tried upvoting, but not sure they will let me yet. I'm very appreciative! – reciprocityFailure Nov 16 '18 at 23:02

How can I get the URL of each uploaded file and send through email?

1 Answers1