Any way to pass a file back to a file form field on error?

bunner_bob

I've got a form with a "file" field in it, like this:

<input name="imagefile" type="file" />

When the user clicks the button they choose a file, submit the form, and the submitted file is passed along as $_FILES['imagefile'].

If there's an error though, the script reloads the form and is supposed to echo back what the user input (with comments showing where the error was made, etc.) Works fine for everything, but I can't get it to echo the chosen file back in the file form field.

I tried adding a "value" parameter to the form field. When it echoes back I get

value="Array"

which makes sense, as a file upload is an array of parameters in PHP. But the form button still says "no file selected".

Any idea if there's a way to echo a file to a file form field, or are these fields strictly "input only" - one-way fields?

Thanks
Bob

dalecosp

If you echo() or print() an array, you'll get exactly this result. What do you really want echoed? Is it maybe (I'm guessing here) $FILES['imagefile']['filename'] or somesuch? If so, that's what you need as the value of the input field:

<input type="imagefile" type="file" value="<?=$_FILES['imagefile']['filename'] ?>"/>

You only mentioned the button at the end of your post, and didn't give any code for it. We'd need some more info on that, I guess...

Apologies if I'm way off base here ...

bunner_bob

Sorry for not being clear. But I've been reading up on $_FILES and I see I've missed the big picture. When you submit a form with a "file" type field (with a file selected), the uploaded file is stored on the server running PHP (unless otherwise specified). There doesn't seem to be any way of capturing (and thus echoing) the ACT of choosing a particular file on the user's machine, or the path to that file, which is what I'm trying to do. I basically want to save the user the task of choosing the file again if they make an error elsewhere in the form and are taken back to it by the errorchecking script. And I don't think it can be done.

I suppose what I could do is save the uploaded file to a directory somewhere, AFTER the errorchecking that tests the file's validity, but BEFORE the errorchecking that tests the other user input. Then if there's an input error I could echo that file back to the form as an image or name of the file or something.

Only problem with that is if they decide to bail on the process after their error, I'm left with an orphaned image file on the server. Guess I could write a cron job to flush the temp directory or something....maybe after I kill all the other bugs 🙂

dalecosp

Originally posted by bunner bob
And I don't think it can be done.

I suppose what I could do is save the uploaded file to a directory somewhere, AFTER the errorchecking that tests the file's validity, but BEFORE the errorchecking that tests the other user input. Then if there's an input error I could echo that file back to the form as an image or name of the file or something.

Hmm, or have 'em just use Mozilla 😉

Only problem with that is if they decide to bail on the process after their error, I'm left with an orphaned image file on the server. Guess I could write a cron job to flush the temp directory or something....maybe after I kill all the other bugs 🙂

That's a good idea for any server...