Beginner PHP Tutorial - 85 - File Handling: Deleting and Renaming Files Part 1 Video Lecture | PHP for Absolute Beginners: From Novice to PHP Master - Web Development

hi this is Alex from PHP academy' org
and welcome back to another PHP video
tutorial for the new Boston now we've
already looked at creating files putting
content into files now what do we want
to do if we want to delete we want to
rename files so in this video we're
going to go over a couple of functions
for deleting files and one function to
rename files so we have a function that
specifically deletes a file that we
specify and then a function that renames
a file to a file name of our choice so
I've got a file here could file to
delete txt and I've got a file here
called file to rename dot txt now I'm
not going to be using any examples in
this set in this tutorial I'm just going
to be showing you the functions and how
they work and we're going to be testing
it in the video but why might you want
to delete a file well let's just say you
were allowing your users to upload files
you may be storing them somewhere else
say in a database or you may be giving
them access to a link that maybe would
let them delete the file so if you
wanted to allow your users to delete
files that you've uploaded then
obviously this function that we're going
to talk about in a moment is going to be
useful to you now why might you want to
rename files well first of all like my
prior example about the deleting the
file you may want to give you user the
option to rename a file that they may
have uploaded you also might want to
rename a file that already exists on
your server for example if you're
allowing users to upload files but you
wanted to keep these as a hidden name
you could say generate an md5 hash if
you know how to do that or you may
generate some random numbers and call
this file let's say you know a value of
a random numbers txt for example
obviously depending on whether it was a
text file or another file type so I've
created this file called file to delete
and obviously we're going to be deleting
this and then of creating a file called
file to rename and we're going to be
renaming this to a file name with a
random number as the as the text of the
file name we're going to keep the
extension dot txt though so let's just
open up our browser so we know what
we're doing we can see the file dot PHP
is the PHP file that we're currently
working on this is where we're going to
be conforming our actions from and we've
got file to Lee txt which we can keep an
eye on because obviously we want to
delete this and file to rename because
obviously we want to rename this file so
let's go ahead and talk about how we're
going to delete a file now you may think
that the the function would be something
like delete but we actually have the
function name as unlink so we call the
function like this it's always a good
idea to put this into an if statement
once we've done it here with the first
argument it only takes one argument I
think there's one argument which is an
absolute must and there may be other
optional arguments but go over to
php.net look up this function and you'll
be able to find specific information
about it so the argument that we give
this is the father we want to delete
with regards to the whole file name so
let's go ahead and type file to delete
dot txt now if we were to run this
program it would delete the file however
let's go ahead and put this into an if
statement and the first block is going
to be if this is true so in other words
if this file has been successfully
deleted
so inside here we can say echo file has
been deleted we could also just to make
things run a lot smoother and you're
probably going to be storing your
filename in a in a variable anyway we
can give a file name variable a straight
of string datatype just up here so let's
go ahead and put the file name into a
variable called file name and
here let's reference that in there so
what we can do is we can say file and
then maybe create some strong tags here
and we can then concatenate on the file
name itself so you can see how it's easy
to reuse the same file name that we've
specified up here so otherwise we want
to give an error message now we're going
to be performing a test that is going to
is actually going to activate this error
message and that's going to be when
we've already deleted the file so once
we've deleted the file we're not going
to be able to delete it again because
obviously it doesn't exist so we're
going to we're going to be showing this
we're going to be running this cut
script twice the first time it's going
to successfully delete the file and the
second time it's going to return us an
error okay so let's go ahead and put
some text in so file cannot be deleted
just for example you can obviously
reference this variable in there if you
want it's entirely up to you so as it
stands we're going to unlink the file
name so we're going to be deleting this
file to delete txt and then we're going
to be giving a confirmation message to
the user