Creating a file inside a folder that doesn't exist yet in php

Question

if(!file_exists(dirname($file)))
    mkdir(dirname($file), 0777, true);
//do stuff with $file.

Use the third parameter to mkdir(), which makes it create directories recursively.

With

$directories = explode( '/', $path );

you can split the path to get single directory names. Then go through the array and create the directories setting chmod 777. (The system user, who executes php must have the ability to do that.)

$file = array_pop( $directories );
$base = '/my/base/dir';

foreach( $directories as $dir )
{

   $path = sprintf( '%s/%s', $base, $dir )
   mkdir( $path ); 
   chmod( $path, 777 );
   $base = $path;

}

// file_put_contents or something similar
file_put_contents( sprintf( '%s/%s', $base, $file ), $data );

The problem here is that you might not set chmod from your php script.

An alternative could be to use FTP. The user passes FTP login data to the script and it uses FTP functionality to manage files.

http://www.php.net/FTP

It's little too late but I found this question and I have a solution for this, here is an example code and it works good for me no matter how deep is your file. You should change directory separator for lines 1 and 3 if you're running it on Windows server.

$pathToFile = 'test1/test2/test3/test4/test.txt';
$fileName = basename($pathToFile);
$folders = explode('/', str_replace('/' . $fileName, '', $pathToFile));

$currentFolder = '';
foreach ($folders as $folder) {
    $currentFolder .= $folder . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
    if (!file_exists($currentFolder)) {
        mkdir($currentFolder, 0755);
    }
}
file_put_contents($pathToFile, 'test');

Best regards, Georgi!

Create any missing folders using mkdir(), then create the empty file using touch().

You can use absolute paths in both cases, meaning:

mkdir('data');
mkdir('data/newfolder');
mkdir('data/newfolder/10302008');
touch('data/newfolder/10302008/log_for_Today.txt');

if you're curious about where it's starting-point it will be, you can use getcwd() to tell you the working directory.