How to Upload File in CodeIgniter

Our tutorials are designed to make web development simple. Step-by-step instructions make our tutorial more developer-friendly. Therefore web developers like our tutorial rather than the official user manual. Recently we have received many requests for publishing the tutorial on CodeIgniter file upload and instantly we have decided to publish this tutorial.

This tutorial will show how to upload file in CodeIgniter using File Uploading Class. CodeIgniter’s File Uploading Class helps to upload files to the server. You can use various preferences for configuring your file upload and restrict the type and size of the files.

For your better understand we’ll demonstrate the file upload with an example. Also, we’ll upload the user picture to the server and insert the user data to the database.

Before starting the tutorial, please take a look at the folders & files structure based on this example application.

Creating Database Table (users):

Before start to writing the code, create a table into your application’s database. For this example you can create a users table into the database with some basic fields. The users table SQL would like the below.

CREATE TABLE `users` (
 `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
 `name` varchar(100) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
 `email` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
 `picture` varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci NOT NULL,
 `created` datetime NOT NULL,
 `modified` datetime NOT NULL,
 `status` tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1' COMMENT '1=Active, 0=Inactive',
 PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;

Controller (Users.php):

Create a controller called Users.php. Place the following code in it and save this file to application/controllers/ directory.
User model loaded into the __construct() function for inserting user data into the database.
Initially, add() function will load the user adding form. When the form is submitted, picture would be uploaded and data would be inserted into the database via User model.

<?php defined('BASEPATH') OR exit('No direct script access allowed');
class Users extends CI_Controller
{
    function  __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->load->model('user');
    }
    
    function add(){
        if($this->input->post('userSubmit')){
            
            //Check whether user upload picture
            if(!empty($_FILES['picture']['name'])){
                $config['upload_path'] = 'uploads/images/';
                $config['allowed_types'] = 'jpg|jpeg|png|gif';
                $config['file_name'] = $_FILES['picture']['name'];
                
                //Load upload library and initialize configuration
                $this->load->library('upload',$config);
                $this->upload->initialize($config);
                
                if($this->upload->do_upload('picture')){
                    $uploadData = $this->upload->data();
                    $picture = $uploadData['file_name'];
                }else{
                    $picture = '';
                }
            }else{
                $picture = '';
            }
            
            //Prepare array of user data
            $userData = array(
                'name' => $this->input->post('name'),
                'email' => $this->input->post('email'),
                'picture' => $picture
            );
            
            //Pass user data to model
            $insertUserData = $this->user->insert($userData);
            
            //Storing insertion status message.
            if($insertUserData){
                $this->session->set_flashdata('success_msg', 'User data have been added successfully.');
            }else{
                $this->session->set_flashdata('error_msg', 'Some problems occured, please try again.');
            }
        }
        //Form for adding user data
        $this->load->view('users/add');
    }
}

We’ve used some required Preferences in our file upload configuration. You can get all the available Preferences from here – https://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/file_uploading.html#preferences

Model (User.php):

Create a model called User.php. Place the following code in it and save this file to application/models/ directory.
insert() function insert the provided data into the users table.

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class User extends CI_Model{
    function __construct() {
        $this->tableName = 'users';
        $this->primaryKey = 'id';
    }
    
    public function insert($data = array()){
        if(!array_key_exists("created",$data)){
            $data['created'] = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
        }
        if(!array_key_exists("modified",$data)){
            $data['modified'] = date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
        }
        $insert = $this->db->insert($this->tableName,$data);
        if($insert){
            return $this->db->insert_id();
        }else{
            return false;    
        }
    }
}

View (add.php):

Create a view called add.php. Place the following code in it and save this file to application/views/users/ directory.
add.php file contains form HTML, it is used to collect the user data and submit to the controller.

<?php echo $this->session->flashdata('success_msg'); ?>
<?php echo $this->session->flashdata('error_msg'); ?>
<form role="form" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <div class="panel">
        <div class="panel-body">
            <div class="form-group">
                <label>Picture</label>
                <input class="form-control" type="file" name="picture" />
            </div>
            <div class="form-group">
                <label>Name</label>
                <input class="form-control" type="text" name="name" />
            </div>
            <div class="form-group">
                <label>Email</label>
                <input class="form-control" type="text" name="email" />
            </div>
             <div class="form-group">
                <input type="submit" class="btn btn-warning" name="userSubmit" value="Add">
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</form>

Creating Upload Directory:

Create the uploads/images/ directory to storing the uploaded images.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we’ve trying to show the basic example of CodeIgniter file upload. We hope you have learned how to upload a file in CodeIgniter using upload library. If you have any questions about CodeIgniter file upload, let us know by commenting here.