File uploads without $_FILES

Question

Is it possible in PHP to configure it to somehow not save files to disk at all? As a matter of fact, the best thing would be to get the script going before even reading the entire POST body. (Keeping my hopes high ;))

Answer 1

You can turn off file uploads via a configuration setting in PHP.

http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.file-uploads

Answer 2

take a look to that similar question here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2693529/read-file-as-its-being-uploaded

Answer 3

PHP needs a place to temporarily store the files content for you to be able to interact with it through PHP - although, you don't have to do anything else other then access the temporary file to get the data:

$content = file_get_contents($_FILES["user_file"]["tmp_name"]);

From here on you can manipulate with the files content without having to move the uploaded file to another location before accessing it.

Answer 4

You can use HTTP PUT requests to directly upload a file. PHP will not handle the upload directly (e.g. set it up in $_FILES). Instead, you have to read the raw bytes from the php://input pseudo-url and from there can do whatever you want.

There's some details and examples here.