sf_upload_dir, sf_upload_dir_name, sf_data_dir… I know there are a lot of configuration values available throughout the symfony code, but I don’t use them enough to remember what they are exactly. The Symfony Upload File documention helps describe which paths you need for for file uploads. In your templates/view, you will want to use:
sfConfig::get('sf_upload_dir_name')
This will usually be the string “uploads” unless you changed the setting in your configuation. When you need the *full path* to the file on your web server, say to move or save the uploaded file, then you use:
sfConfig::get('sf_upload_dir')
To make things easier, usually I will use those configuration settings in conjunction with a custom setting for the type of media I am uploading. Say for example I have a “Person” table that has a column named “photo”. This column stores a file name of a person’s picture. I want to store all of these photos in web/uploads/photos. First, I’ll add a setting to my app.yml file:
all:
dir:
photo: "photos"
doc: "docs"
logo: "logos"
Then in my lib/model/Person.php, I’ll add a method to give me the web path:
public function getPhotoPath()
{
return $this->getPhoto() ? '/' . sfConfig::get('sf_upload_dir_name') . '/' . sfConfig::get('app_dir_photo') . '/' . $this->getPhoto() : null;
}
May seem like a lot of code, but now anytime I want to display the person’s picture in a template I can use:
<?php image_tag($person->getPhotoPath()) ?>
If I ever decide to move all the stored photos into another directory, perhaps because it’s growing too large and we want them in subfolders based on username or something, then all we have to do is change it in one place and we can be certain no existing templates will break.
If instead you wanted to change the actual ‘uploads’ path, then you can override the symfony parameter in your project’s config/config.php file (note this is copied from the symfony documentation page linked to above):
sfConfig::add(array(
'sf_upload_dir_name' => $sf_upload_dir_name = 'uploads',
'sf_upload_dir' => sfConfig::get('sf_root_dir').DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.sfConfig::get('sf_web_dir_name').DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$sf_upload_dir_name,
));
As a final note for the curious, if you look in your symfony directory (the actual symfony code base, not your project directory), you can take a look at all of the sfConfig values in config/constants.php. Here are a few variables and their default values that might come in handy:
$sf_root_dir = sfConfig::get('sf_root_dir');
$sf_app = sfConfig::get('sf_app');
$sf_environment = sfConfig::get('sf_environment');
$sf_bin_dir_name = 'batch',
$sf_cache_dir_name = 'cache',
$sf_log_dir_name = 'log',
$sf_lib_dir_name = 'lib',
$sf_web_dir_name = 'web',
$sf_upload_dir_name = 'uploads',
$sf_data_dir_name = 'data',
$sf_config_dir_name = 'config',
$sf_apps_dir_name = 'apps',
$sf_test_dir_name = 'test',
$sf_doc_dir_name = 'doc',
$sf_plugins_dir_name = 'plugins',
