Best way to move files with php

Question

Hey all,
I've created an "Update Item" Page where the user is able to move the item from one catergory to another, however, each item has an image so the image needs to be able to move to the correct folder if the user moves the item.
Here is the code I wrote based on what I have found on the web.
A) It doesn't work
B) I've now learned this could open the site up to massive security risks.
if (array_key_exists('submit', $_POST)) {
$oldPath = $row_rsImages['parentPage'];
$newPath = $_POST['parentPage'];
$file = $row_rsImages['imageURL'];
copy('../images/photography/$oldPath/$file', '../images/photography/$newPath/$file');
Any ideas or pointers would be very welcome at this moment in time!
Cheers
T

Answer 1

Yep, I understand - when the user changes the category, that also updates the path to the related image. And, it sounds like you are using different folders for different categories, so is it more of an organizational thing?
I'm not trying to push yo into a different solution only because I don't know the answer to your original question, but I still would just use a single folder for all the images. If users have upload capabilities, then the folder would be by itself in the root with the correct permissions. All the sorting and filtering is done on the display pages according to the database values, User ID, category, etc.
If there's an issue with duplicate file names when a user uploads a new image, having different destination folders will decrease that possibility, but won't eliminate it. That's why the upload script should have provisions for what to do when it encounters an existing file name, to over write the file, or modify the filename. And the final version of the uploaded filename is what gets passed to the insert or update script to store it in the database.
I realize that this would require changing a number of things in your application - insert and update forms, the pages that display the images, etc and that getting the move script to work would be a quicker fix. You may ALS want to try to find out more about why that script would present any security risks in addition to just having a folder or folders with write permissions as upload repositories.