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Table of Contents

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

The Filesystem Component

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Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 3.1, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 6.2 (the current stable version).

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 Filesystem class is the unique endpoint for filesystem operations:

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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:

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$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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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$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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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// 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:

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

isAbsolutePath

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

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// 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):

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

The file.txt file contains Hello World now.

Error Handling

Whenever something wrong happens, an exception implementing ExceptionInterface or IOExceptionInterface is thrown.

Note

An IOException is thrown if directory creation fails.

Learn More

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