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The Filesystem Component

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The Filesystem Component
- Installation
- Usage
  - mkdir
  - exists
  - copy
  - touch
  - chown
  - chgrp
  - chmod
  - remove
  - rename
  - symlink
  - makePathRelative
  - mirror
  - isAbsolutePath
  - dumpFile
- Error Handling
- Learn More

The Filesystem Component¶

The Filesystem component provides basic utilities for the filesystem.

Installation¶

You can install the component in 2 different ways:

Install it via Composer (symfony/filesystem on Packagist);
Use the official Git repository (https://github.com/symfony/filesystem).

Then, require the vendor/autoload.php file to enable the autoloading mechanism provided by Composer. Otherwise, your application won’t be able to find the classes of this Symfony component.

Usage¶

The Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Filesystem class is the unique endpoint for filesystem operations:

use Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Filesystem;
use Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Exception\IOExceptionInterface;

$fs = new Filesystem();

try {
    $fs->mkdir('/tmp/random/dir/'.mt_rand());
} catch (IOExceptionInterface $e) {
    echo "An error occurred while creating your directory at ".$e->getPath();
}

Note

Methods mkdir(), exists(), touch(), remove(), chmod(), chown() and chgrp() can receive a string, an array or any object implementing Traversable as the target argument.

mkdir¶

mkdir() creates a directory. On POSIX filesystems, directories are created with a default mode value 0777. You can use the second argument to set your own mode:

$fs->mkdir('/tmp/photos', 0700);

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

Note

This function ignores already existing directories.

exists¶

exists() checks for the presence of all files or directories and returns false if a file is missing:

// this directory exists, return true
$fs->exists('/tmp/photos');

// rabbit.jpg exists, bottle.png does not exists, return false
$fs->exists(array('rabbit.jpg', 'bottle.png'));

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

copy¶

copy() is used to copy files. If the target already exists, the file is copied only if the source modification date is later than the target. This behavior can be overridden by the third boolean argument:

// works only if image-ICC has been modified after image.jpg
$fs->copy('image-ICC.jpg', 'image.jpg');

// image.jpg will be overridden
$fs->copy('image-ICC.jpg', 'image.jpg', true);

touch¶

touch() sets access and modification time for a file. The current time is used by default. You can set your own with the second argument. The third argument is the access time:

// set modification time to the current timestamp
$fs->touch('file.txt');
// set modification time 10 seconds in the future
$fs->touch('file.txt', time() + 10);
// set access time 10 seconds in the past
$fs->touch('file.txt', time(), time() - 10);

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

chown¶

chown() is used to change the owner of a file. The third argument is a boolean recursive option:

// set the owner of the lolcat video to www-data
$fs->chown('lolcat.mp4', 'www-data');
// change the owner of the video directory recursively
$fs->chown('/video', 'www-data', true);

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

chgrp¶

chgrp() is used to change the group of a file. The third argument is a boolean recursive option:

// set the group of the lolcat video to nginx
$fs->chgrp('lolcat.mp4', 'nginx');
// change the group of the video directory recursively
$fs->chgrp('/video', 'nginx', true);

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

chmod¶

chmod() is used to change the mode of a file. The fourth argument is a boolean recursive option:

// set the mode of the video to 0600
$fs->chmod('video.ogg', 0600);
// change the mod of the src directory recursively
$fs->chmod('src', 0700, 0000, true);

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

remove¶

remove() is used to remove files, symlinks, directories easily:

$fs->remove(array('symlink', '/path/to/directory', 'activity.log'));

Note

You can pass an array or any Traversable object as the first argument.

rename¶

rename() is used to rename files and directories:

// rename a file
$fs->rename('/tmp/processed_video.ogg', '/path/to/store/video_647.ogg');
// rename a directory
$fs->rename('/tmp/files', '/path/to/store/files');

symlink¶

symlink() creates a symbolic link from the target to the destination. If the filesystem does not support symbolic links, a third boolean argument is available:

// create a symbolic link
$fs->symlink('/path/to/source', '/path/to/destination');
// duplicate the source directory if the filesystem
// does not support symbolic links
$fs->symlink('/path/to/source', '/path/to/destination', true);

makePathRelative¶

makePathRelative() returns the relative path of a directory given another one:

// returns '../'
$fs->makePathRelative(
    '/var/lib/symfony/src/Symfony/',
    '/var/lib/symfony/src/Symfony/Component'
);
// returns 'videos/'
$fs->makePathRelative('/tmp/videos', '/tmp')

mirror¶

mirror() mirrors a directory:

$fs->mirror('/path/to/source', '/path/to/target');

isAbsolutePath¶

isAbsolutePath() returns true if the given path is absolute, false otherwise:

// return true
$fs->isAbsolutePath('/tmp');
// return true
$fs->isAbsolutePath('c:\\Windows');
// return false
$fs->isAbsolutePath('tmp');
// return false
$fs->isAbsolutePath('../dir');

dumpFile¶

dumpFile() allows you to dump contents to a file. It does this in an atomic manner: it writes a temporary file first and then moves it to the new file location when it’s finished. This means that the user will always see either the complete old file or complete new file (but never a partially-written file):

$fs->dumpFile('file.txt', 'Hello World');

The file.txt file contains Hello World now.

Error Handling¶

Whenever something wrong happens, an exception implementing Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Exception\ExceptionInterface or Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Exception\IOExceptionInterface is thrown.

Note

An Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Exception\IOException is thrown if directory creation fails.

Learn More¶

LockHandler

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.