How to Resolve File Uploading Error?

Question

I have a module using which I need to upload an image. However Magento does not allow that.This is the stack trace that I have obtained

Unable to create directory 'http://localhost/rajeev/magento/media/rktsizechart/sc'.

#0 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/lib/Varien/File/Uploader.php(183): Varien_File_Uploader->_createDestinationFolder('http://localhos...')
#1 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/app/code/local/Rkt/Sizechart/controllers/Adminhtml/Cms/SizechartController.php(130): Varien_File_Uploader->save('http://localhos...', 'guitar.jpg')
#2 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Action.php(418): Rkt_Sizechart_Adminhtml_Cms_SizechartController->saveAction()
#3 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Router/Standard.php(250): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action->dispatch('save')
#4 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Front.php(172): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Router_Standard->match(Object(Mage_Core_Controller_Request_Http))
#5 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/App.php(354): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Front->dispatch()
#6 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/app/Mage.php(684): Mage_Core_Model_App->run(Array)
#7 /home/rajeev/public_html/magento/index.php(87): Mage::run('', 'store')
#8 {main}

Beautiful. Path looks ok. Then why it does not work. So I debugged more. The last error is thrown from Varien_File_Uploader->_createDestinationFolder(). This is the code that we can see there.

private function _createDestinationFolder($destinationFolder)
{
    if (!$destinationFolder) {
        return $this;
    }

    if (substr($destinationFolder, -1) == DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) {
        $destinationFolder = substr($destinationFolder, 0, -1);
    }

    if (!(@is_dir($destinationFolder) || @mkdir($destinationFolder, 0777, true))) {
        throw new Exception("Unable to create directory '{$destinationFolder}'.");
    }
    return $this;
}

No need to look full code. I am damn sure this is the code that makes problem here

 mkdir($destinationFolder, 0777, true);

Now I dont know why it returns false here. I have tried to put some urls directly over there. I can see that, if I am pointing to outside media directory, it returns true.

media directory has 777 permission. Then how the hell is this happening ?

In general I want to know,

How can I properly debug magento uploading error ?

What are the main reasons that cause magento file uploadation not successful ?

Answer 1

 bool mkdir ( string $pathname [, int $mode = 0777 [, bool $recursive = false [, resource $context ]]] )

$pathname should be the server path to the file and not a url

Try

$path = Mage::getBaseDir('media') . DS;

You should try using Varien_File_Uploader

/* Starting upload */
$uploader = new Varien_File_Uploader('filename');

// Any extention would work
$uploader->setAllowedExtensions(array('jpg', 'jpeg', 'gif', 'png'));
$uploader->setAllowRenameFiles(false);

// Set the file upload mode 
// false -> get the file directly in the specified folder
// true -> get the file in the product like folders 
//  (file.jpg will go in something like /media/f/i/file.jpg)
$uploader->setFilesDispersion(false);

// We set media as the upload dir
$path = Mage::getBaseDir('media') . DS;
$uploader->save($path, $_FILES['filename']['name']);

Answer 2

What it looks like is your upload path is being generated using Mage::getBaseUrl this will provide you with a url and not a directory. If you replace this with Mage::getBaseDir then it will now work.

Your base path is http://localhost/rajeev/magento/media/rktsizechart/sc but should be a something like /var/www/magento/media/rktsizechart/sc