How Can I Efficiently Check File Extensions in PHP Upload Forms?

Checking File Extension in PHP Upload Forms

Uploading files to a server often requires checking the file extension to ensure it's an acceptable file type. This is crucial for ensuring the security and functionality of your application.

Your Method vs. a Better Approach

Your current method, which uses the pathinfo function to extract the extension, is functional but potentially inefficient. Checking multiple extensions individually with if statements can become unwieldy, especially if you need to support a larger number of extensions.

A more efficient approach is to use an array to store the allowed extensions and check if the file extension matches any of the elements in the array. This is typically faster than using multiple if statements and is more extensible if you need to modify the allowed extensions in the future.

Improved Code:

<?php
$allowed = array('gif', 'png', 'jpg');
$filename = $_FILES['video_file']['name'];
$ext = pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
if (!in_array($ext, $allowed)) {
    echo 'error';
}
?>

In this improved code, we define an array named $allowed to specify the allowed file extensions. The in_array function is then used to check if the extracted file extension matches any element in the array. If it doesn't, an error message is displayed.

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