PHP file_exists not working

Question

I'm trying to make profile photos show up against a list of reviews on a site I'm working on. If they don't have a profile photo I have a standard image to show instead, unfortunately the image always goes to the standard image rather than the profile even if it exists. Heres the code:

$reviewerPic = 'http://www.[URL].co.uk/images/members/' . $reviewPosterId . '/profilePic.jpg';
$default_pic = 'http://www.[URL].co.uk/images/background.jpg';
    if(file_exists($reviewerPic)){
        $reviewer_pic = '<img src="' . $reviewerPic . '" width="100px" style="float: left; margin: 20px;" />';
    }else {
        $reviewer_pic = '<img src="' . $default_pic . '" width="100px" style="float: left; margin: 20px;" />';
}

Pretty generic code but it doesn't seem to work! It just keeps showing the background image...

Any ideas on why file_exists wouldn't be working?

Answer 1

The function you are using, file_exists, uses physical paths, the parameter you need to provide should be the address on that server where the file can be found, and not an url

Sou you should have something like

/home/var/www/images/

instead of

http://www.[URL].co.uk/images/

So you need to check if the file exists on the server locally and after that you can use an url to make it available to the public (in img src)

You can see on the man page that this function only works with some URL wrappers, so it is better to use paths and not urls (I guess it depends on allow url fopen setting)