MeioUpload Behavior – An improved File Upload Behavior for CakePHP
MeioUpload Behavior is an improved File Upload Behavior for the CakePHP framework. It’s based on the Digital Spaghetti’s Upload Behavior.
Juan Basso created a project hosted at github. I am unable to keep working on this behavior an he is making some updates to the code. I think github is a great tool because you can simply fork the project and make your own changes. Go check his work: http://github.com/jrbasso/MeioUpload/tree/master
Download
MeioUploadBehavior version 1.0.1
Related Articles
- Documentation translated to French
- Documentation translated to Ukrainian
- Junnan’s post
- Dave Rupert’s comment about MeioUpload Behavior
Features
- Can be used for any kind of files;
- Accepts custom directory for files to be uploaded;
- Validates the file extension and mime-type due to the behavior configuration;
- Validates the max file size;
- Allow custom validation rules;
- Allow as many thumbnails formats as you want;
- Allow more then one field to be uploadable, with custom options per field;
- Stores the directory, filesize, and mime-type in the database if the table has these fields. Also allows to customize these fields names;
- Allow the use of default files and deleting files without deleting the entire record;
- Delete files when the record is deleted or updated with a new file;
- Also works in the $model->saveAll method.
Usage
- Place the meio_upload.php file in your app/models/behaviors folder;
- If you want to use thumbnails, download Nate’s phpThumb Component and place it in your app/controllers/components folder;
- Insert in your model table a character varying field:
CREATE TABLE `products` ( `id` int(8) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, `name` varchar(255) default NULL, `description` text default NULL, `price` double default NULL, `picture` varchar(255) default NULL, `dir` varchar(255) default NULL, `mimetype` varchar(255) NULL, `filesize` int(11) unsigned default NULL, `created` datetime default NULL, `modified` datetime default NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
- Add the MeioUpload in the $actsAs of your model:
var $actsAs = array( 'MeioUpload' => array( 'picture' => array( 'dir' => 'img{DS}{model}{DS}{field}', 'create_directory' => true, 'allowed_mime' => array('image/jpeg', 'image/pjpeg', 'image/png'), 'allowed_ext' => array('.jpg', '.jpeg', '.png'), 'thumbsizes' => array( 'normal' => array('width'=>200, 'height'=>200), ), 'default' => 'default.jpg', ) ) ); - Use a form file input to the field:
echo $form->input('picture', array('type' => 'file')); - Make sure your form has multipart/form-data enctype:
echo $form->create('Product',array('type' => 'file')); - Make sure the PHP has permission to write in the folder yous specified and the php.ini allow the MAX_FILE_SIZE you specified.
Options
When you apply the MeioUpload Behavior to a Model, you pass an array with your options. Here are the options you can change and it’s defaults.
-
dir
The folder where the uploaded files will be saved. It must be inside the app/webroot directory and defaults to an empty string, what means that it will be the app/webroot itself. If you specify some path, then it will be app/webroot/the_path_you/specified. In this option you may use the {DS} pattern, what will be converted to ‘/’ in UNIX systems and to ‘\’ in Windows systems. -
allowed_mime
This option specifies the allowed mime-types for the files. It defaults to an empty array. What means that every mime-type will be accepted. But if you specify an array with the mime-types allowed, only files of these mime-types will be accepted.var $actsAs = array( 'picture' => array( 'allowed_mime' => array('image/jpeg', 'image/pjpeg', 'image/png') ) );The code above says that the picture field will be a file uploaded, and it allows ‘image/jpeg’, ‘image/pjpeg’ and ‘image/png’ mime-types. -
allowed_ext
This option specifies the allowed file extensions. It defaults to an empty array. What means that every extension will be accepted. But if you specify an array with the extensions allowed, only files with these extensions will be accepted.var $actsAs = array( 'picture' => array( 'allowed_ext' => array('.jpg', '.jpeg', '.png') ) );The code above says that the picture field will be a file uploaded, and it allows ‘.jpg’, ‘.jpeg’ and ‘.png’ extensions. -
create_directory
If you want to create the directory specified in the dir option if it don’t exists, then set this option to true. It already defaults to true, but you can set it to false. -
max_size
The max file size allowed in the upload. Be sure it’s lower then the php.ini configuration. You can set a numeric value of bytes, or set it in other unit like ‘8 Kb’, only ‘kb’, ‘mb’, ‘gb’ and ‘tb’ units are allowed and it’s not case-sensitive. It defaults to 2 Mb.var $actsAs = array( 'picture' => array( 'max_size' => '4 Mb' ) ); -
default
If you have a file that you want to use if the field is left blank, like a default picture for users who don’t have one, set this option to the name of this file. Make sure it is inside the folder specified in the ‘dir’ option.var $actsAs = array( 'picture' => array( 'default' => 'default.jpg' ) ); -
fields
With this option you can customize the field inside your model table, where the data will be saved. The filename is the key of the options array, and you can setup fields to store the filesize, mime-type and directory. It defaults to ‘filesize’, ‘mimetype’ and ‘dir’ respectively, but you can customize with an array:var $actsAs = array( 'picture' => array( 'fields' => array( 'filesize' => 'picture_filesize', 'mimetype' => '{field}_mimetype', 'dir' => 'pictures_folder' ) ) );The code above says that your filesize, mimetype and dir fields will be ‘picture_filesize’, ‘picture_mimetype’ and ‘picture_folder’ respectively. And the filename field will be pictures. You may notice that in mimetype case, i used the constant {field} that will be replaced with the field name(picture in this case).
Validations
The behavior automatically include some validations to your field. Here they are:
- FieldName Checks if the field has been setup to be and uploadable.
- Dir Checks if the directory exists or if it can be created. This validation depends on the option ‘create_directory’.
- Empty Checks if the filename is not empty. It defaults to be used only on create.
- UploadError Checks if ocurred erros in the upload.
- MaxSize Checks if the file isn’t bigger then the max file size option.
- InvalidMime Checks if the file is of an allowed mime-type.
- InvalidExt Checks if the file has an allowed extension.
You can overwrite any of the parameters of these default validation rules. Directly in the model $validate var:
var $validate = array(
'picture' => array(
'Empty' => array(
'check' => false
),
'InvalidExt => array(
'message' => 'This file extension isn't allowed.'
)
)
);
In the code above, i changed the message for the ‘InvalidExt’ default validation. You can also disable any of the default validations by setting the ‘check’ atribute fo false as is shown in the example above for the ‘Empty’ default validation. You can change any of the other parameters of the built-in cake validation:
var $validate = array(
'picture' => array(
'Empty' => array(
'rule' => array('YourDefaultValidation'),
'on' => 'update',
'required' => true
),
)
);
You can also change the validation rule for one you have created. But use this functionality carefully.
Setting up file removing
If you send a form data with as field named data[Model][field][remove] not empty, then the behavior will automatically delete the file associated with the record and set it’s value to the default, if it is set, or to empty. To achieve this you can add a checkbox to your form:
echo $form->input('Product.picture.remove', array('type' => 'checkbox'));


July 7th, 2009 at 10:58
hai Vinícius Mendes thanx for your quick reply
, but still i use the the same extension as the rules say, if you want take look my code, i make a news form which can upload an image , this is my …/view/news/add.ctp code :
create(‘News’);?>
end(‘Submit’);?>
and this is my is my model (…/model/news.php)
array(‘notempty’), ‘content’ => array(‘notempty’), ‘image_url’ => array(‘notempty’) );
); } ?>
July 7th, 2009 at 11:41
Hi Vincent
Thanks for writing this great behaviour, which I’ve been using for ages and in a lot of projects. Recently I’ve just written 2 more behaviours that extend your upload behaviour.
One the behaviours of them lets you easily use a single model to store all your uploads that can be referenced from any other model. e.g. Post hasMany Upload, Product hasMany Upload
The other behaviour is designed to let you do multiple uploads at the same time.
I hope they come in useful to other people, any feedback appreciated.
I’ve written a post about it here http://www.flipflops.org/2009/06/29/two-cakephp-behaviours-to-extend-meioupload/ and you can download an example app with them both plugged in too.
Cheers
John
July 7th, 2009 at 12:27
Bendo, what kind of image are you uploading? What is the full filename (with extension)?
July 9th, 2009 at 14:57
Is it me or does this have a problem with file extensions that are in upper case? (like .JPG instead of .jpg)
July 9th, 2009 at 16:39
@Steltek I fixed this bug in my fork of the meioupload: http://github.com/vbmendes/MeioUpload/tree/master
July 15th, 2009 at 08:20
Thanks. I’m in fact using an older version of your fork (no clue where I picked it up) and patched it accordingly. Trying a drop-in replacement of it now, but I did get a parse error on line 909 as there’s a comma missing after “‘maxDimension’ => ”)”.
July 20th, 2009 at 17:24
VJ2Y0M oswspmcprqwt, [url=http://lkkvlhdgukbq.com/]lkkvlhdgukbq[/url], [link=http://aizmprajfokq.com/]aizmprajfokq[/link], http://xxwowoogwtao.com/
July 29th, 2009 at 23:33
@Steltek Vinicius Mendes, jrbasso and I are coordinating (some-what) in bringing some bug fixes and features. I’ve fixed that in my repo and pushed. Some things I’d like to see are better internationalization and translations, moving it into a plugin, advanced configuration of phpThumb, and other types of uploads/transloads.
FYI, these are the repos that are being worked on:
http://github.com/jrbasso/MeioUpload/tree/master http://github.com/josegonzalez/MeioUpload/tree/master
September 8th, 2009 at 06:30
Hi, I am leaving a comment to fix a bug on the meio_upload behaviour wehen working under PHP4.
I had an error in the _fixname function in the behaviour meio_upload.php. The error shown was: undefined index Info, (my model was Info). However it works fine under PHP 5. The problem comes from the setup function of the behaviour in the following line code:
function setup(&$model, $settings = array()) { /* PHP 5 OK BUT PROBLEM IN fixname WITH PHP 4*/ $this->_model = $model;
… }
The solution:
function setup(&$model, $settings = array()) { // PHP 4 We have to add the “&” $this->__model = &$model;
… } With out adding the “&”, with PHP 4, a new copy of the model object was created and the data array of the model was empty, that’s why we have the index undefined. We have to use the original model object itself, not a copy.
Now it works under PHP 4 and 5.
Regards.
Moon.
September 10th, 2009 at 07:58
Hi to all,
I’ve a problem when I try to upload a none image file (pdf, zip, etc).
Since behavior version 1.7.1 always I try to upload a none image file get a “Invalid file type.” error. Older versions like 1.6.1 works fine but 1.7.1 and 2.0 don’t work. (CakePHP version 1.2.5 and 1.2.4.8284, PHP version 5.2.6)
I’ve the next behaviour configuration: ‘allowed_mime’ => array( ‘image/gif’, ‘image/jpeg’, ‘image/pjpeg’, ‘image/png’, ‘application/pdf’), ‘allowed_ext’ => array(‘.jpg’, ‘.jpeg’, ‘.png’, ‘.gif’, ‘.pdf’),
Somebody have the same problem?
I’m still debuging and some idea will be wellcome.
Thanks for advance.