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'));


March 10th, 2009 at 18:30
Hi. Very nice behavior! But I have some problems. I have on “Model” which one can have multiple images. So “Model” HasMany Images and before I upload images I already have an id of last inserted “Model” ID and now I want to upload images like this uploads/”Model”/{“MODEL”_ID}/picture.jpg etc. I have tried something, but the problem is because $model in setup() have no data from controller and $model in beforeSave() have all this info, but in beforeSave() I don’t need this information’s
Do you have any tip on that?
“Model” = Whatever you want
Thanks Best regards
March 10th, 2009 at 23:05
Hello Vinicius, First of all I want to congratulate you, MeioUpload is the best way to deal with file uploads that i found, this makes file upload realy painless! I found a problem in my application when I wrote a model that has two files, an ebook and a cover image, so i configure MeioUpload to deal with these two fields, but sometimes i needed to deal and upload only one field, and i was getting always an error about extension validation of the other file, because since it is declared, it is always validated. The solution i found was adding the following methods do MeioUpload:
function disableField(&$model, $fieldName) { if(isset($this->__fields[$fieldName])) { $this->__disabledFields[$fieldName] = $this->__fields[$fieldName]; unset($this->__fields[$fieldName]); } }
function enableField($fieldName) { if(isset($this->__disabledFields[$fieldName])) { $this->__fields[$fieldName] = $this->__disabledFields[$fieldName]; unset($this->__disabledFields[$fieldName]); } }
and a $this->__disabledFields variable that would store disabled fields.
Now i when i deal with the pdf file only, i disable cover image file settings, so it isnt validated and don’t cause errors.
Cumprimentos!
March 19th, 2009 at 11:28
@Manop Kongoon (#60) Hi, I found a way to rename a file before upload and its pretty simple. I just changed the filename before it was saved and it worked
eg.
if (!empty($this->data)) { $this->data['Model']['filename']['name'] = ‘new-filename.ext’; $this->Model->create(); if ($this->Model->save($this->data)) { ….
March 19th, 2009 at 12:17
@Sola Ajayi Great idea, thanks a lot. I would be very useful, thanks.
March 19th, 2009 at 12:41
Sola Ajayi – Great idea, thanks a lot.
March 21st, 2009 at 09:45
Hi everyone, can someone help me please ..
how to made the file that upload save to folder according user_id or yearmonth ?
example: ‘dir’ => ‘files{DS}employee{DS}profile{DS}{user_id}’ ..\webroot\files\user\profile\1\
..\webroot\files\user\profile\2\ . . .
or
‘dir’ => ‘files{DS}employee{DS}profile{DS}{month}, ..\webroot\files\user\profile901\
..\webroot\files\user\profile902\ . . .
and thanks creator for this nice behavior! please me alot
April 5th, 2009 at 07:01
You have done a wonderful job here, and saved people a huge amount of time. I think this should be in the core behaviors its really super helpful. Thanks again for sharing your hard work! We still look forward to a multiple file upload example!
April 7th, 2009 at 04:28
@Sparkybarkalot @sutehi @Sytze Loor and anyone else who gets an array field problem. I had it because I’d accidently put the script in the wrong location so it wasn’t getting called, and then I had to change the permissions.
Once I had done that it was fine, so double check!
April 9th, 2009 at 10:54
[...] usando o MeioUpload para fazer o Upload de arquivos. Precisei saber o MIME Type de um determinado arquivo, achei uma [...]
April 14th, 2009 at 18:16
Vinicius, I have translated all of the error messages in MeioUpload into English. I did this for my own benefit, but perhaps it might be helpful to others as well.