The Filesystem Component

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Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 7.1 (the current stable version).

The Filesystem component provides platform-independent utilities for filesystem operations and for file/directory paths manipulation.

Installation

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$ composer require symfony/filesystem

Note

If you install this component outside of a Symfony application, you must require the vendor/autoload.php file in your code to enable the class autoloading mechanism provided by Composer. Read this article for more details.

Usage

The component contains two main classes called Filesystem and Path:

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

$filesystem = new Filesystem();

try {
    $filesystem->mkdir(
        Path::normalize(sys_get_temp_dir().'/'.random_int(0, 1000)),
    );
} catch (IOExceptionInterface $exception) {
    echo "An error occurred while creating your directory at ".$exception->getPath();
}

Filesystem Utilities

mkdir

mkdir() creates a directory recursively. 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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$filesystem->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.

Note

The directory permissions are affected by the current umask. Set the umask for your webserver, use PHP's umask function or use the chmod function after the directory has been created.

exists

exists() checks for the presence of one or more files or directories and returns false if any of them is missing:

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// if this absolute directory exists, returns true
$filesystem->exists('/tmp/photos');

// if rabbit.jpg exists and bottle.png does not exist, returns false
// non-absolute paths are relative to the directory where the running PHP script is stored
$filesystem->exists(['rabbit.jpg', 'bottle.png']);

Note

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

copy

copy() makes a copy of a single file (use mirror() to copy directories). 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
$filesystem->copy('image-ICC.jpg', 'image.jpg');

// image.jpg will be overridden
$filesystem->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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// sets modification time to the current timestamp
$filesystem->touch('file.txt');
// sets modification time 10 seconds in the future
$filesystem->touch('file.txt', time() + 10);
// sets access time 10 seconds in the past
$filesystem->touch('file.txt', time(), time() - 10);

Note

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

chown

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

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// sets the owner of the lolcat video to www-data
$filesystem->chown('lolcat.mp4', 'www-data');
// changes the owner of the video directory recursively
$filesystem->chown('/video', 'www-data', true);

Note

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

chgrp

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

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// sets the group of the lolcat video to nginx
$filesystem->chgrp('lolcat.mp4', 'nginx');
// changes the group of the video directory recursively
$filesystem->chgrp('/video', 'nginx', true);

Note

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

chmod

chmod() changes the mode or permissions of a file. The fourth argument is a boolean recursive option:

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// sets the mode of the video to 0600
$filesystem->chmod('video.ogg', 0600);
// changes the mode of the src directory recursively
$filesystem->chmod('src', 0700, 0000, true);

Note

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

remove

remove() deletes files, directories and symlinks:

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$filesystem->remove(['symlink', '/path/to/directory', 'activity.log']);

Note

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

rename

rename() changes the name of a single file or directory:

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// renames a file
$filesystem->rename('/tmp/processed_video.ogg', '/path/to/store/video_647.ogg');
// renames a directory
$filesystem->rename('/tmp/files', '/path/to/store/files');
// if the target already exists, a third boolean argument is available to overwrite.
$filesystem->rename('/tmp/processed_video2.ogg', '/path/to/store/video_647.ogg', true);

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

readlink() read links targets.

The readlink() method provided by the Filesystem component behaves in the same way on all operating systems (unlike PHP's readlink function):

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// returns the next direct target of the link without considering the existence of the target
$filesystem->readlink('/path/to/link');

// returns its absolute fully resolved final version of the target (if there are nested links, they are resolved)
$filesystem->readlink('/path/to/link', true);

Its behavior is the following:

  • When $canonicalize is false (the default value):
    • if $path does not exist or is not a link, it returns null.
    • if $path is a link, it returns the next direct target of the link without considering the existence of the target.
  • When $canonicalize is true:
    • if $path does not exist, it returns null.
    • if $path exists, it returns its absolute fully resolved final version.

Note

If you wish to canonicalize the path without checking its existence, you can use canonicalize() method instead.

makePathRelative

makePathRelative() takes two absolute paths and returns the relative path from the second path to the first one:

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

mirror

mirror() copies all the contents of the source directory into the target one (use the copy() method to copy single files):

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

isAbsolutePath

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

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

tempnam

tempnam() creates a temporary file with a unique filename, and returns its path, or throw an exception on failure:

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// returns a path like : /tmp/prefix_wyjgtF
$filesystem->tempnam('/tmp', 'prefix_');
// returns a path like : /tmp/prefix_wyjgtF.png
$filesystem->tempnam('/tmp', 'prefix_', '.png');

5.1

The option to set a suffix in tempnam() was introduced in Symfony 5.1.

dumpFile

dumpFile() saves the given contents into 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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$filesystem->dumpFile('file.txt', 'Hello World');

The file.txt file contains Hello World now.

appendToFile

appendToFile() adds new contents at the end of some file:

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$filesystem->appendToFile('logs.txt', 'Email sent to user@example.com');
// the third argument tells whether the file should be locked when writing to it
$filesystem->appendToFile('logs.txt', 'Email sent to user@example.com', true);

If either the file or its containing directory doesn't exist, this method creates them before appending the contents.

5.4

The third argument of appendToFile() was introduced in Symfony 5.4.

Path Manipulation Utilities

5.4

The Path class was introduced in Symfony 5.4.

Dealing with file paths usually involves some difficulties:

  • Platform differences: file paths look different on different platforms. UNIX file paths start with a slash ("/"), while Windows file paths start with a system drive ("C:"). UNIX uses forward slashes, while Windows uses backslashes by default.
  • Absolute/relative paths: web applications frequently need to deal with absolute and relative paths. Converting one to the other properly is tricky and repetitive.

Path provides utility methods to tackle those issues.

Canonicalization

Returns the shortest path name equivalent to the given path. It applies the following rules iteratively until no further processing can be done:

  • "." segments are removed;
  • ".." segments are resolved;
  • backslashes ("\") are converted into forward slashes ("/");
  • root paths ("/" and "C:/") always terminate with a slash;
  • non-root paths never terminate with a slash;
  • schemes (such as "phar://") are kept;
  • replace ~ with the user's home directory.

You can canonicalize a path with canonicalize():

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echo Path::canonicalize('/var/www/vhost/webmozart/../config.ini');
// => /var/www/vhost/config.ini

You can pass absolute paths and relative paths to the canonicalize() method. When a relative path is passed, ".." segments at the beginning of the path are kept:

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echo Path::canonicalize('../uploads/../config/config.yaml');
// => ../config/config.yaml

Malformed paths are returned unchanged:

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echo Path::canonicalize('C:Programs/PHP/php.ini');
// => C:Programs/PHP/php.ini

Converting Absolute/Relative Paths

Absolute/relative paths can be converted with the methods makeAbsolute() and makeRelative().

makeAbsolute() method expects a relative path and a base path to base that relative path upon:

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echo Path::makeAbsolute('config/config.yaml', '/var/www/project');
// => /var/www/project/config/config.yaml

If an absolute path is passed in the first argument, the absolute path is returned unchanged:

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echo Path::makeAbsolute('/usr/share/lib/config.ini', '/var/www/project');
// => /usr/share/lib/config.ini

The method resolves ".." segments, if there are any:

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echo Path::makeAbsolute('../config/config.yaml', '/var/www/project/uploads');
// => /var/www/project/config/config.yaml

This method is very useful if you want to be able to accept relative paths (for example, relative to the root directory of your project) and absolute paths at the same time.

makeRelative() is the inverse operation to makeAbsolute():

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echo Path::makeRelative('/var/www/project/config/config.yaml', '/var/www/project');
// => config/config.yaml

If the path is not within the base path, the method will prepend ".." segments as necessary:

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echo Path::makeRelative('/var/www/project/config/config.yaml', '/var/www/project/uploads');
// => ../config/config.yaml

Use isAbsolute() and isRelative() to check whether a path is absolute or relative:

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Path::isAbsolute('C:\Programs\PHP\php.ini')
// => true

All four methods internally canonicalize the passed path.

Finding Longest Common Base Paths

When you store absolute file paths on the file system, this leads to a lot of duplicated information:

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return [
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/config/config.yaml',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/config/routing.yaml',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/config/services.yaml',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/images/banana.gif',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/uploads/images/nicer-banana.gif',
];

Especially when storing many paths, the amount of duplicated information is noticeable. You can use getLongestCommonBasePath() to check a list of paths for a common base path:

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$basePath = Path::getLongestCommonBasePath(
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/config/config.yaml',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/config/routing.yaml',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/config/services.yaml',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/images/banana.gif',
    '/var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs/uploads/images/nicer-banana.gif'
);
// => /var/www/vhosts/project/httpdocs

Use this common base path to shorten the stored paths:

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return [
    $basePath.'/config/config.yaml',
    $basePath.'/config/routing.yaml',
    $basePath.'/config/services.yaml',
    $basePath.'/images/banana.gif',
    $basePath.'/uploads/images/nicer-banana.gif',
];

getLongestCommonBasePath() always returns canonical paths.

Use isBasePath() to test whether a path is a base path of another path:

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Path::isBasePath("/var/www", "/var/www/project");
// => true

Path::isBasePath("/var/www", "/var/www/project/..");
// => true

Path::isBasePath("/var/www", "/var/www/project/../..");
// => false

Finding Directories/Root Directories

PHP offers the function dirname to obtain the directory path of a file path. This method has a few quirks:

  • dirname() does not accept backslashes on UNIX
  • dirname("C:/Programs") returns "C:", not "C:/"
  • dirname("C:/") returns ".", not "C:/"
  • dirname("C:") returns ".", not "C:/"
  • dirname("Programs") returns ".", not ""
  • dirname() does not canonicalize the result

getDirectory() fixes these shortcomings:

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echo Path::getDirectory("C:\Programs");
// => C:/

Additionally, you can use getRoot() to obtain the root of a path:

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echo Path::getRoot("/etc/apache2/sites-available");
// => /

echo Path::getRoot("C:\Programs\Apache\Config");
// => C:/

Error Handling

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

Note

An IOException is thrown if directory creation fails.

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