Test of file existence always fails

Question

<?
$user_image = '../images/users/' . $userid . 'a.jpg';
if (file_exists($user_image)) 
{
    echo '<img src="'.$user_image.'" alt="" />';
} 
else 
{
    echo '<img src="../images/users/small.jpg" alt="" />';
}
?>

Hello all, this code is supposed to check for a file and if it doesnt work, display another. For some reason it is ALWAYS displaying the placeholder and never finds the initial file even though it is there. Is there something obviously not right here? Thanks for reading!

Answer 1

the PHP is running in a different directory. try echo getcwd();

Answer 2

If your relative path points outside of the htdocs subdirectories, then the image will not be sent by the webserver

Answer 3

file_exists does not work with relative paths. Try something like this:

$user_image = $_SERVER{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'}.'/../images/users/' . $userid . 'a.jpg';
if (file_exists($user_image))
// blah blah

But, as Artefacto suggests, it's better to use the real path:

$user_image = '/path/to/your/files/images/users/' . $userid . 'a.jpg';

It's easier to maintain since you can use that code on different PHP scripts located on different directories without having to change anything.

Answer 4

I mean I'm not always the smartest with php, but is your concat location correct? Because right now, won't it resolve to /images/users/userida.jpg ? is this really what you want?

Answer 5

I think you should check to see what realpath('../images/users/' . $userid . 'a.jpg') returns. I get the feeling it has something to do with the relative path

Answer 6

Try using realpath and dirname instead.

<?
$user_image = '../images/users/' . $userid . 'a.jpg';
if (file_exists(realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . $user_image))) 
{
    echo '<img src="'.$user_image.'" alt="" />';
} 
else 
{
    echo '<img src="../images/users/small.jpg" alt="" />';
}
?>