file_exists() - Can't get it to work for me...

[suttercain]

I'm still not able to get this file_exists function to work for me. Here is the code I am using...

 

<?php
$filename = '/msprog/offroad/cert/eo/'.$row['engine_year'].'/ofci/'.$row['engine_executive_order'].'.pdf';
  if (file_exists($filename)) {
    $engineFamilyName = "<a href=".$filename.">".$row['engine_family_name']."</a>";
  } else {
    $engineFamilyName = $row['engine_family_name']; //This is what it echos even though a file is there.
  }

echo $engineFamilyName . "<br />";

echo "<a href='$filename'>$filename</a>"; //I check the file path and it works. The link goes to the pdf document.
?>

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[F1Fan]

file_exists uses absolute server paths, so add $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] before your $filename variable in the file_exists function.

 

file_exists($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$filename)

 

Modify: Actually, you may have an extra / in there, because I think the doc root var has one at the end.

[suttercain]

Hi F!Fan,

 

Thanks for the reply. I tried that and altered the code to be:

 

<?php
$filename = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/msprog/offroad/cert/eo/'.$row['engine_year'].'/ofci/'.$row['engine_executive_order'].'.pdf';
  if (file_exists($filename)) {
    $engineFamilyName = "<a href=".$filename.">".$row['engine_family_name']."</a>";
  } else {
    $engineFamilyName = $row['engine_family_name'];
  }

echo $engineFamilyName . "<br />"; //echos the else result, no link.

echo "<a href='$filename'>$filename</a>"; //This no longer links to the document like it did in the previous code.
?>

 

This is the path it is trying to check the file for:

/app/www/outside/msprog/offroad/cert/eo/2002/ofci/U-R-011-0064.pdf

[F1Fan]

Is that the absolute path on the server, or is it the part after the www.yoursite.com/ ?

 

The reason I ask is because you're using the same thing for your a href and for file_exists. They need to be treated differently. So, let's use this example. Let's say that on your server, the path is:

/data/website/files/somefile.pdf

and the web path is:

www.yoursite.com/files/somefile.pdf

 

That means your file_exists needs to use /data/website/files/somefile.pdf and a href needs to use /files/somefile.pdf

 

Hope that helps.

[suttercain]

Gotcha,

 

Okay I did this:

 

<?php
$path = '/app/www/outside';
$filename = '/msprog/offroad/cert/eo/'.$row['engine_year'].'/ofci/'.$row['engine_executive_order'].'.pdf';
$filepath = $path . $filename;
  if (file_exists($filepath)) {
    $engineFamilyName = "<a href=".$filename.">".$row['engine_family_name']."</a>";
  } else {
    $engineFamilyName = $row['engine_family_name'];//this is the one that gets echoed.
  }

echo $engineFamilyName . "<br />"; //echos the else result, no link.

echo "<a href='$filename'>$filename</a>"; //This link works and goes to the file.
?>

 

The $filename now links properly, but the check for file_exists still doesn't link right when checking for the file.

 

Also, I checked and our site's safe_mode is off.

[F1Fan]

Hmm. Try this maybe:

 

<?php
$filename = 'msprog/offroad/cert/eo/'.$row['engine_year'].'/ofci/'.$row['engine_executive_order'].'.pdf';
  if (file_exists($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $filename)) {
    $engineFamilyName = "<a href='/".$filename."'>".$row['engine_family_name']."</a>";
  } else {
    $engineFamilyName = $row['engine_family_name'];//this is the one that gets echoed.
  }

echo $engineFamilyName . "<br />"; //echos the else result, no link.

echo "<a href='/$filename'>$filename</a>"; //This link works and goes to the file.
?>

 

I moved some of the /s around

[suttercain]

Thanks again for helping with this.

 

I tried the code above and still no link but I can see why. I am running the script at:

http://domain.com/diesel/verdev/vdb/vdb.php

 

The files are located here:

http://domain.com/msprog/offroad/cert/eo/2002/ofci/U-R-011-0064.pdf

 

When I tried the code above it is trying to find the file here:

http://domain.com/diesel/verdev/vdb/msprog/offroad/cert/eo/2002/ofci/U-R-011-0064.pdf

 

 

[mursalat]

the path is: '../../../msprog/offroad/cert/eo/'

forget about the server root, it works for me without the server root stuff, so the new code can be:

<?php
$filename = '../../../msprog/offroad/cert/eo/'.$row['engine_year'].'/ofci/'.$row['engine_executive_order'].'.pdf';
  if (file_exists($filename)) {
    $engineFamilyName = "<a href=".$filename.">".$row['engine_family_name']."</a>";
  } else {
    $engineFamilyName = $row['engine_family_name']; //This is what it echos even though a file is there.
  }

echo $engineFamilyName . "<br />";

echo "<a href='$filename'>$filename</a>"; //I check the file path and it works. The link goes to the pdf document.
?>

[F1Fan]

That's really odd. I just verified and the doc root variable should give the root, which I believe in your case is "/app/www/outside/". Check out the $_SERVER variable and it's available keys: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php

 

If that doesn't work, try hard-coding it like you started to do before.

[suttercain]

Cool. Thanks for your time.