It should be noted that all of the recursive mkdir functions coded below are no longer required - as of 5.0.0 it says the "recursive" flag is available. I just tested it, it properly works (and I would assume it works for streams and Windows as well, if not, then it would be a bug)
mkdir
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
mkdir — Makes directory
Description
Attempts to create the directory specified by pathname.
Parameters
- pathname
-
The directory path.
- mode
-
The mode is 0777 by default, which means the widest possible access. For more information on modes, read the details on the chmod() page.
Note: mode is ignored on Windows.
Note that you probably want to specify the mode as an octal number, which means it should have a leading zero. The mode is also modified by the current umask, which you can change using umask().
- recursive
-
Default to FALSE.
- context
-
Note: Context support was added with PHP 5.0.0. For a description of contexts, refer to Stream Functions.
Return Values
Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure.
ChangeLog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 5.0.0 | The recursive parameter was added |
| 5.0.0 | As of PHP 5.0.0 mkdir() can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to List of Supported Protocols/Wrappers for a listing of which wrappers support mkdir() |
| 4.2.0 | The mode parameter became optional. |
Examples
Example #1 mkdir() example
<?php
mkdir("/path/to/my/dir", 0700);
?>
Notes
Note: When safe mode is enabled, PHP checks whether the directory in which the script is operating has the same UID (owner) as the script that is being executed.
mkdir
15-Jul-2008 04:32
17-May-2008 08:19
<?php
/**
* Makes directory and returns BOOL(TRUE) if exists OR made.
*
* @param $path Path name
* @return bool
*/
function rmkdir($path, $mode = 0755) {
$path = rtrim(preg_replace(array("/\\\\/", "/\/{2,}/"), "/", $path), "/");
$e = explode("/", ltrim($path, "/"));
if(substr($path, 0, 1) == "/") {
$e[0] = "/".$e[0];
}
$c = count($e);
$cp = $e[0];
for($i = 1; $i < $c; $i++) {
if(!is_dir($cp) && !@mkdir($cp, $mode)) {
return false;
}
$cp .= "/".$e[$i];
}
return @mkdir($path, $mode);
}
?>
08-Mar-2008 01:05
<?php
/**
* Makes directory, returns TRUE if exists or made
*
* @param string $pathname The directory path.
* @return boolean returns TRUE if exists or made or FALSE on failure.
*/
function mkdir_recursive($pathname, $mode)
{
is_dir(dirname($pathname)) || mkdir_recursive(dirname($pathname), $mode);
return is_dir($pathname) || @mkdir($pathname, $mode);
}
?>
03-Mar-2008 02:30
> CON is the console. To create a file from
> scratch under dos you do: COPY CON filename.txt
> It then allows you to type until you press CTRL-D.
It is Ctrl+Z actually :)
14-Feb-2008 02:15
Here's a script to create a recursive directory path on NAS or another server using Common Internet File System (CIFS)
e.g. you already have a directory on a server
\\server/share/dir1/dir2
you want to create some more directories
\\server/share/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4
<?php
function remote_mkpath($server, $path) {
$dirs = array();
$path = preg_replace('/(\/){2,}|(\\\){1,}/','/',$path); //only forward-slash
$dirs = explode("/", $path);
$path = "\\\\" . $server . "/";
$i = 0;
foreach ($dirs AS $element) {
$path .= $element . "/";
if(!is_dir($path) && $i != 0) {
if(!mkdir($path)){
echo "something was wrong at : " . $path;
return 0;
}
}
$i++;
}
return true;
echo $path;
}
// example usage
remote_mkpath("SERVER", "share/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4");
?>
Good luck!
Ashley
22-Jan-2008 12:04
p-garcia : since PHP 5, setting the recursive flag (which currently has no notes in the manual entry) will allow you to create nested directories in the same way as Windows / Linux mkdir -p, so long as the webserver has permissions to write in the root directory of the path specified
eg:
<?php
mkdir ("./newdir1/newdir2/newdir3/", 0755, true);
// Returns TRUE if you have permission to write to the current directory
// and creates nested directories with permissionsrwxr-xr-x
?>
21-Jan-2008 08:45
After a long time trying to catch the cause of the warning: "mkdir() [function.mkdir]: No such file or directory", I finally realized that this function is not recursive; I mean, that if you want to create the folder -for example- c:\temp\t1\t2, you must do:
mkdir("c:\\temp\\t1") ;
mkdir("c:\\temp\\t1\\t2") ;
because mkdir is not like the windows mkdir where you can acomplish this in one single step.
09-Sep-2007 04:36
dude at patabugen, try <?php umask(0); ?> before <?php mkdir($gallery."/".$name, 0755); ?>.
05-Sep-2007 09:30
I had some problems creating directories and then not being able to access them because of permissions. The only way i have found to get around the problem was to create them with 0777 then chmod them to 4755.
<?PHP
mkdir($gallery."/".$name, 0755);
chmod($gallery."/".$name, 4755);
?>
27-Aug-2007 10:34
On the other hand, splitting path on something else then a DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR may give unexpected results when someone accualy wants a file name with backslash in it! Moreover, neither Alan's nor pluto's code check for errors or return any value. Also, I don't like the isset($folder[$i]) technique -- there is a count() function you know.
<?php
function recursive_mkdir($path, $mode = 0777) {
$dirs = explode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR , $path);
$count = count($dirs);
$path = '.';
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; ++$i) {
$path .= DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $dirs[$i];
if (!is_dir($path) && !mkdir($path, $mode)) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
?>
It will only fail if someone specifies a mode which does not allow owner to create new entries in directory.
04-May-2007 11:17
When creating directories in Windows, trailing periods (".") are ignored. for example:
<?php
mkdir('c:/Buck Jr.',0755); // on Windows creates "c:/Buck Jr"
mkdir('c:/Elipses...',0755); // on Windows creates "c:/Elipses"
mkdir('c:/php.com',0755); // on Windows creates "c:/php.com"
?>
This is a Window's quirk, not a php shortcoming--meaning that you get the same results from a Window's command prompt.
13-Mar-2007 01:00
I've discovered that since my (shared) hosting provider upgraded to PHP 5.1.6 , a script containing this mkdir doesn't work:
<?php
mkdir('/home/benge/photos/gallery1/extra_large/', 0777);
?>
but this does work:
<?php
mkdir('/home/benge/photos/gallery1/extra_large', 0777);
?>
the difference being, the trailing slash "/" after "extra_large.
There were three ways to fix the problem:
1. remove the trailing slash from the script code
2. downgrade to < PHP 5.1.6
3. turn safe mode off
I went with option 1.
08-Mar-2007 11:58
It should be noted that although the documentation says that the default permissions for mkdir are 0777, this is not always the case.
I'm running LAMP and without explicitly setting the permissions, the directories created had permissions of 0755.
08-Jan-2007 06:02
Re: john 4t idserver d0t org, and djneoform at gmail dot com's posts from 27 Oct 2006:
On Windows systems, several keywords are reserved and cannot be used as filenames, in addition to just CON and PRN. Attempting to create a folder with one of these names using mkdir will throw the unhelpful error "Invalid argument". According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp ?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/naming_a_file.asp :
"Do not use the following reserved device names for the name of a file: CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9. Also avoid these names followed by an extension, for example, NUL.tx7.
Windows NT: CLOCK$ is also a reserved device name."
These keywords are also case-insensitive. I don't know what problems are posed by using these keywords with extensions, but I successfully created a folder named "con_f".
20-Dec-2006 09:07
One small correction on a note from Frank in June 2006 on recursive directories under Windows.
First - this should be in the documentation as its the only function that I know of that php does not fix the slashes automatically.
Franks note stated:
<?php
$mypath="testdir\subdir\test";
mkdir($mypath,0777,TRUE);
?>
This doesn't work in windows:
<?php
$mypath="testdir/subdir/test";
mkdir($mypath,0777,TRUE);
?>
----
This will work a bit better :)
<?php
$mypath="testdir\\subdir\\test";
mkdir($mypath,0777,TRUE);
?>
12-Nov-2006 10:42
The 'mkdir' function doesn't function correctly on Windows when the pathname contain space(s) on the final. PHP returns a warning, and the directory isn't created:
Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Invalid argument in X on line Y
Temporary fix: use trim() on the pathname
Besides, if the pathname contain space(s) on the start, the directory is created when couldn't even so (in accordance with the behavior of Windows Explorer).
~ v1d4l0k4
27-Oct-2006 02:27
Windows reserves the names PRN and CON as they are devices in DOS. Back in the day, you could easily print a document via "type filename.txt > PRN".
CON is the console. To create a file from scratch under dos you do: COPY CON filename.txt
It then allows you to type until you press CTRL-D.
27-Oct-2006 10:28
Forewarning to windows users.
If you try to create a directory called "prn" or "con" windows will reject the name and cause an error.
apparently (i found this out the hard way) windows simply cannot have directories by those names, who knows why..
11-Oct-2006 10:51
fixed bug with the previous script:
else if (!ftp_site($connection, "CHMOD 0777 $newDir"){ // change attributes
is missing an ")" so it should read:
else if (!ftp_site($connection, "CHMOD 0777 $newDir")) { // change attributes
13-Aug-2006 02:13
I've been wrestling with mkdir on a server with safe mode turned on (I think, I kept getting barmy permissions on the new dirs).
In the end the solution was to use:
exec (mkdir ...
exec (chmod ...
For this to work I had to use the setuid bit on the script itself. I tried this with the mkdir() function, but to no avail. (To do the setuid bit I ran chmod 4775 on the script file from the command line.)
18-Jul-2006 08:41
Somehow the recursive version of mkdir didn't work for me on Mac and the workaraounds listed below alsow didn't work for me, so heres my solution:
<?php
function mkdir_r($dirName, $rights=0777){
$dirs = explode('/', $dirName);
$dir='';
foreach ($dirs as $part) {
$dir.=$part.'/';
if (!is_dir($dir) && strlen($dir)>0)
mkdir($dir, $rights);
}
}
?>
Tested and works ;)
08-Apr-2006 08:53
one small gotcha:
mkdir(""), mkdir(false), and mkdir(null) give a "file exists" error. this is also true of a directory name consisting of any string that only contains space characters.
(this was on php 5.1.2 on Windows 2000)
22-Mar-2006 12:23
A little understanding of LISPlike programming makes this sort of task (recursive mkdir()ing in PHP4) much simpler. This version works nicely:
<?php
function MakeDirectory($dir, $mode = 0755)
{
if (is_dir($dir) || @mkdir($dir,$mode)) return TRUE;
if (!MakeDirectory(dirname($dir),$mode)) return FALSE;
return @mkdir($dir,$mode);
}
?>
How it works: line one attempts to make the directory, and returns TRUE if it works or if it already exists. That's the easy case if the parent directories all exist.
Line two trims off the last directory name using dirname(), and calls MakeDirectory recursively on that shorter directory. If that fails, it returns FALSE, but otherwise we come out of it knowing that the parent directory definitely exists.
Finally, presuming the recursive call worked, once we get to line three we can create the requested directory.
Note the use of @ to suppress warning messages from mkdir.
The beauty of this is that if, say, the great-grandparent directory exists but the grandparent and parent directories don't, the function will simply call itself recursively until it gets high enough up the tree to do some work, then carry on unwinding back until all the new directories have been created.
This is pretty bog-standard recursive programming. Anyone who can't wrap their head around it after a few minutes of concentration should probably try a career in sales.
10-Mar-2006 04:26
Greg, your code does not work for me; maybe it has a bug or we have configuration changes. Anyway, this one works to create recursively the directory DIRECTORY.
<?
define ("DIRECTORY", "/tmp/mydir/mysubdir");
do {
$dir = DIRECTORY;
while (!is_dir($dir)) {
$basedir = dirname($dir);
if ($basedir == '/' || is_dir($basedir))
mkdir($dir,0777);
else
$dir=$basedir;
}
} while ($dir != DIRECTORY);
?>
function mkdirs($dir, $mode = 0777, $recursive = true) {
if( is_null($dir) || $dir === "" ){
return FALSE;
}
if( is_dir($dir) || $dir === "/" ){
return TRUE;
}
if( mkdirs(dirname($dir), $mode, $recursive) ){
return mkdir($dir, $mode);
}
return FALSE;
}
23-Dec-2005 09:10
Mkdir will work on parent directories as long as file permissions are right and the openbase restriction is not on.
~Sean
14-Dec-2005 03:10
While researching for this function, I have found out that - at least on my system - mkdir only works when the parent directory is the one your script is in.
eg:
you want to create a directory tmp
mkdir ('tmp', 0775);
will create /path/to/your/script/tmp
but if you this
mkdir ('/path/to/your/tmp', 0755);
or
mkdir ('../tmp', 0755);
both will cause an error - permission denied.
Trond
02-Nov-2005 12:14
I could not get the sticky bit set properly using the octal mode: 2775 (rwxrwsr-x)
$foo='my_directory';
$old_umask = umask(0);
mkdir($foo,2775);
umask($old_umask);
using the above lines renders a directory with permissions:
d-wx-wSrwt 2 www www 4096 Nov 2 11:43 my_directory
Not exactly what I was looking for.
This gets closer to the mark:
$foo='my_directory';
$old_umask = umask(0);
mkdir($foo,0777); // the default chmod
umask($old_umask);
drwxrwsrwx 2 www www 4096 Nov 2 11:46 my_directory
11-Oct-2005 02:38
When safe_mode is enabled, and you create a directory via mkdir, you can't create a second inside the first because the first folder's user is that one of the webserver and not that one of the script. This is dumb and very annoying :(
16-Sep-2005 03:51
Ive onlybeen coding in PHP for a couple of months so i Don't have all the syntax tricks down yet.
I wrote this function to create all the dirs in a path if they don't exist. its not actually recursive but i was to lazy to change the name :)
theoretically i want it to work for both win and nix. As soon my project manager gets me a win box i'm gonna test it out. anyrevisions to the function below would be appreciated.
<?php
// \
function recur_mkdirs($path, $mode = 0777) //creates directory tree recursively
{
//$GLOBALS["dirseparator"]
$dirs = explode($GLOBALS["dirseparator"],$path);
$pos = strrpos($path, ".");
if ($pos === false) { // note: three equal signs
// not found, means path ends in a dir not file
$subamount=0;
}
else {
$subamount=1;
}
for ($c=0;$c < count($dirs) - $subamount; $c++) {
$thispath="";
for ($cc=0; $cc <= $c; $cc++) {
$thispath.=$dirs[$cc].$GLOBALS["dirseparator"];
}
if (!file_exists($thispath)) {
//print "$thispath<br>";
mkdir($thispath,$mode);
}
}
}
?>
09-Jun-2005 02:37
I had to remove the $path in the CHMOD command before the function worked for me. The function was at the $path directory prior to initiating the CHMOD command, so it tried to go down the $path directory again.
// create directory through FTP connection
function FtpMkdir($path, $newDir) {
$server='ftp.server.com'; // ftp server
$connection = ftp_connect($server); // connection
// login to ftp server
$user = "me";
$pass = "pass";
$result = ftp_login($connection, $user, $pass);
// check if connection was made
if ((!$connection) || (!$result)) {
return false;
exit();
} else {
ftp_chdir($connection, $path); // go to destination dir
if(ftp_mkdir($connection, $newDir)) { // create directory
ftp_site($connection, "CHMOD 777 $newDir") or die("FTP SITE CMD failed.");
return $newDir;
} else {
return false;
}
ftp_close($connection); // close connection
}
}
FtpMkdir("path","dir");
23-May-2005 02:43
The 'mkdir' function doesn't function correctly on Windows when the path
contains forward slashes. The part of the path with the forward slashes
doesn't get created.
mkdir('c:/a/b/c/d', 0775, true);
You get the error message:
Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: No such file or directory
Please use backslashes under Windows or use the constant DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.
mkdir('c:\a\b\c\d', 0775, true);
mkdir('c:'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'a'.
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'b'.
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'c'.
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'d', 0775, true);
28-Apr-2005 11:27
Maybe you can use this:
<?php
function open_dir($dir, $newdir){ //The function that will copy the files
if(file_exists($dir) && file_exists($newdir)){
$open_dir=opendir($dir);
while (false !== ($file = readdir($open_dir))) {
if($file != "." && $file != ".."){
if(file_exists($newdir."/".$file) && filetype($newdir."/".$file."/") != "dir"){
unlink($newdir."/".$file);
}
if(filetype($dir."/".$file."/") == "dir"){
if(!file_exists($newdir."/".$file."/")){
mkdir($newdir."/".$file."/");
open_dir($dir."/".$file."/", $newdir."/".$file."/");
}
}
else {
copy($dir."/".$file."/", $newdir."/".$file);
}
}
}
}
}
open_dir("Your source map", "Your destination map"); //Here you can fill in your source en destination map
?>
13-Apr-2005 02:59
Add permission using CHMOD in the above mentioned
// create directory through FTP connection
function FtpMkdir($path, $newDir) {
$server='ftp.server.com'; // ftp server
$connection = ftp_connect($server); // connection
// login to ftp server
$user = "me";
$pass = "pass";
$result = ftp_login($connection, $user, $pass);
// check if connection was made
if ((!$connection) || (!$result)) {
return false;
exit();
} else {
ftp_chdir($connection, $path); // go to destination dir
if(ftp_mkdir($connection, $newDir)) { // create directory
ftp_site($connection, "CHMOD 777 $path/$newDir") or die("FTP SITE CMD failed.");
return $newDir;
} else {
return false;
}
ftp_close($connection); // close connection
}
}
FtpMkdir("path","dir");
03-Mar-2005 12:29
mkdir, file rw, permission related notes for Fedora 3////
If you are using Fedora 3 and are facing permission problems, better check if SElinux is enabled on ur system. It add an additional layer of security and as a result PHP cant write to the folder eventhough it has 777 permissions. It took me almost a week to deal with this!
If you are not sure google for SElinux or 'disabling SELinux' and it may be the cure! Best of luck!
09-Nov-2003 01:28
If you're on a shared *nix server, a directory created through mkdir() will not be assigned to you, but to the user that your host's server or php process is running under, usually 'nobody', 'apache' or 'httpd'.
In practice, this means that you can create directories, even add files to them, but you can't delete the directory or its contents nor change permissions.
It is therefore advised to create directories through PHP's FTP API. Here's a function I wrote:
<?php
// create directory through FTP connection
function FtpMkdir($path, $newDir) {
$server='ftp.yourserver.com'; // ftp server
$connection = ftp_connect($server); // connection
// login to ftp server
$user = "me";
$pass = "password";
$result = ftp_login($connection, $user, $pass);
// check if connection was made
if ((!$connection) || (!$result)) {
return false;
exit();
} else {
ftp_chdir($connection, $path); // go to destination dir
if(ftp_mkdir($connection,$newDir)) { // create directory
return $newDir;
} else {
return false;
}
ftp_close($conn_id); // close connection
}
}
?>
Hope this comes in handy for someone.
You might notice that when you create a new directory using this code:
mkdir($dir, 0777);
The created folder actually has permissions of 0755, instead of the specified
0777. Why is this you ask? Because of umask(): http://www.php.net/umask
The default value of umask, at least on my setup, is 18. Which is 22 octal, or
0022. This means that when you use mkdir() to CHMOD the created folder to 0777,
PHP takes 0777 and substracts the current value of umask, in our case 0022, so
the result is 0755 - which is not what you wanted, probably.
The "fix" for this is simple, include this line:
$old_umask = umask(0);
Right before creating a folder with mkdir() to have the actual value you put be
used as the CHMOD. If you would like to return umask to its original value when
you're done, use this:
umask($old_umask);
22-Jul-1999 05:37
This is an annotation from Stig Bakken:
The mode on your directory is affected by your current umask. It will end
up having (<mkdir-mode> and (not <umask>)). If you want to create one
that is publicly readable, do something like this:
<?php
$oldumask = umask(0);
mkdir('mydir', 0777); // or even 01777 so you get the sticky bit set
umask($oldumask);
?>
