PHP - Check if file exists without knowing the extension

Question

I already saw this question, but it didn't work for me.

What I need to do is to check whether a file exists, in PHP, without knowing the extension. I use this code:

<?php 
if (count(glob("/database/".$_REQUEST['thetitle'].".*")) == 0) {
echo 'true';
} else {
echo 'false';
}
?>

EDIT: Maybe it's relevant saying that the script is located in

[root]/functions/validatefilename.php

and the database in

[root]/database/

But it always returns false, no matter what the filename ($_REQUEST['thetitle']) is.

I doubt your file is at `/database/...`. That's the *root of the disk!* — deceze, Aug 28 '13 at 14:48
Right, I forgot. In HTML, `/database/` would be a folder at the root of my domain. How would you do that in PHP then? — Isaiah, Aug 28 '13 at 14:56
*URLs* in HTML are relative to the current/root *URL*, *local file paths* are relative to where the files are on disk/the disk root. PHP doesn't really care about URLs. URLs have nothing to do with local file paths and vice versa. — deceze, Aug 28 '13 at 14:58

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 28 '13 at 14:07

2

try:

count(glob("./database/".$_REQUEST['thetitle'].".*"))

answered Aug 28 '13 at 14:07

Dusan Plavak

count(glob("../database/".$_REQUEST['thetitle'].".*")) – Dusan Plavak Aug 28 '13 at 14:48
and are you sure that you have right permissions on database folder? [http://www.php.net/glob](http://www.php.net/glob) – Dusan Plavak Aug 28 '13 at 14:49
It worked, thanks to maybe the permissions. But I also used `if (glob("../database/".$_REQUEST['thetitle'].".*") == "") {` – Isaiah Aug 28 '13 at 15:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 28 '13 at 14:09

1

Looks to me like it works fine except that you should be specifying the full path:

if (count(glob( "/path/to/" . "database/" .$_REQUEST['thetitle']. ".*")) == 0) {

answered Aug 28 '13 at 14:09

thedarkwinter

As my edited question now illustrates, /database/ is directly after the root, like website.com/database/ – Isaiah Aug 28 '13 at 14:33
you still may need to explicitly map out the entire path – XaxD Aug 28 '13 at 14:39
I tried `$thevar = glob("http://www.daltonempire.nl/database/Hello.*"); echo '"'; print_r($thevar); echo '"';` and I put a file named "Hello.png" there, but it would still echo "" – Isaiah Aug 28 '13 at 14:53

2 Answers2