PHP Manual: Uploading multiple files

Uploading multiple files

Multiple files can be uploaded using different name for input.

It is also possible to upload multiple files simultaneously and have the information organized automatically in arrays for you. To do so, you need to use the same array submission syntax in the HTML form as you do with multiple selects and checkboxes:

Example #1 Uploading multiple files

<form action="file-upload.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  Send these files:<br />
  <input name="userfile[]" type="file" /><br />
  <input name="userfile[]" type="file" /><br />
  <input type="submit" value="Send files" />
</form>

When the above form is submitted, the arrays $_FILES['userfile'], $_FILES['userfile']['name'], and $_FILES['userfile']['size'] will be initialized.

For instance, assume that the filenames /home/test/review.html and /home/test/xwp.out are submitted. In this case, $_FILES['userfile']['name'][0] would contain the value review.html, and $_FILES['userfile']['name'][1] would contain the value xwp.out. Similarly, $_FILES['userfile']['size'][0] would contain review.html's file size, and so forth.

$_FILES['userfile']['name'][0], $_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'][0], $_FILES['userfile']['size'][0], and $_FILES['userfile']['type'][0] are also set.

Warning

The max_file_uploads configuration setting acts as a limit on the number of files that can be uploaded in one request. You will need to ensure that your form does not try to upload more files in one request than this limit.

Example #2 Uploading an entire directory

In HTML file upload fields, it is possible to upload an entire directory with the webkitdirectory attribute. This feature is supported in most modern browsers.

With the full_path information, it is possible to store the relative paths, or reconstruct the same directory in the server.

<form action="file-upload.php" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  Send this directory:<br />
  <input name="userfile[]" type="file" webkitdirectory multiple />
  <input type="submit" value="Send files" />
</form>

Warning

The webkitdirectory attribute is non-standard and is not on a standards track. Do not use it on production sites facing the Web: it will not work for every user. There may also be large incompatibilities between implementations and the behavior may change in the future.

PHP only parses the relative path information submitted by the browser/user-agent, and passes that information to the $_FILES array. There is no guarantee that the values in the full_path array contains a real directory structure, and the PHP application must not trust this information.