PHP and Ajax Asynchronous File Upload using jQuery

Table of Contents

Introduction:

This tutorial is for beginners, who started working on PHP Project, and wants to add asynchronous file upload feature, so you’re at right place.

What is PHP Asynchronous File Upload?

So you might thinking what is file upload? And how it works?

The answer is here, to upload your file from your local machine to the server (website) is called file upload, it works exactly same as the definition, when we select our file from the browser and click submit, the browser takes file from our local machine and submits it to the server and server do his job to save the file to the defined path.

Here I am going to explain step by step process to create the file upload feature along with the source code of this tutorial so that you can easily download and test on your local machine.

The things you should know before following this tutorial:

PHP
HTML
jQuery
CSS
Bootstrap

So let’s start some coding:

Create PHP Asynchronous File Upload Demo:

Go ahead and create project folder and add new index.html file and use following script:

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>iTech Empires Demo - PHP File upload using jQuery</title>

    <!-- Bootstrap CSS File -->
    <link
      rel="stylesheet"
      type="text/css"
      href="bootstrap-3.3.5-dist/css/bootstrap.css"
    />
  </head>
  <body>
    <!-- Content Section -->
    <div class="container">
      <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-12">
          <h2>PHP File Upload using jQuery</h2>
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-6 col-md-offset-0">
          <div class="form-group">
            <form enctype="multipart/form-data">
              <label>Select File to Upload</label>
              <input id="file_to_upload" type="file" class="form-control" />
            </form>
          </div>
          <div class="form-group">
            <button onclick="uploadFile()" class="btn btn-primary">
              Submit
            </button>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
    <!-- /Content Section -->

    <!-- Jquery JS file -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.11.3.min.js"></script>

    <!-- Bootstrap JS file -->
    <script
      type="text/javascript"
      src="bootstrap-3.3.5-dist/js/bootstrap.min.js"
    ></script>

    <!-- Custom JS file -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="js/script.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

<!DOCTYPE html>

<head>

<title>iTech Empires Demo - PHP File upload using jQuery</title>

<link

rel="stylesheet"

type="text/css"

href="bootstrap-3.3.5-dist/css/bootstrap.css"

</head>

<body>

<h2>PHP File Upload using jQuery</h2>

</div>

<label>Select File to Upload</label>

</form>

</div>

Submit

</button>

</div>

<script

type="text/javascript"

src="bootstrap-3.3.5-dist/js/bootstrap.min.js"

></script>

</body>

</html>

Form and Input Field: The basic need to upload file is to have <form> with enctype="multipart/form-data", if you notice the above file I have added form with enctype, next is the input field of file type, we have this field with the ID “file_to_upload“.

Submit Button: After </form> we have Submit button included with onClick event along with function call uploadFile(), we are going to write this function under script.js file, which is going to handle file upload operation.

Create script.js file:

Let’s create script.js file and add following source code in to it:

script.js:

/*
// Version 1.0
// iTech Empires - jQuery File Upload Script
*/
function uploadFile() {
    if ($("#file_to_upload").val() != "") {
        var file_data = $('#file_to_upload').prop('files')[0];
        var form_data = new FormData();

        form_data.append('file', file_data);

        $.ajax({
            url: 'uploadFile.php', // point to server-side PHP script
            dataType: 'text', // what to expect back from the PHP script, if anything
            cache: false,
            contentType: false,
            processData: false,
            data: form_data,
            type: 'post',
            success: function (data) {
                // get server responce here
                alert(data);
                // clear file field
                $("#file_to_upload").val("");
            }
        });
    }
    else {
        alert("Please select file!");
    }
}

// Version 1.0

// iTech Empires - jQuery File Upload Script

function uploadFile() {

if ($("#file_to_upload").val() != "") {

var file_data = $('#file_to_upload').prop('files')[0];

var form_data = new FormData();

form_data.append('file', file_data);

$.ajax({

url: 'uploadFile.php', // point to server-side PHP script

dataType: 'text', // what to expect back from the PHP script, if anything

cache: false,

contentType: false,

processData: false,

data: form_data,

type: 'post',

success: function (data) {

// get server responce here

alert(data);

// clear file field

$("#file_to_upload").val("");

}

});

}

else {

alert("Please select file!");

}

So we have our script.js file ready, here we have uploadFile() function is defined, this function is basically to check validation and get the selected file from input field and submit it to the uploadFile.php page asynchronously using ajax.

So now we need to create uploadFile.php, so go ahead and crated this file to the root, and use following source code:

uploadFile.php

<?php

if (0 < $_FILES['file']['error']) {
    echo 'Error: ' . $_FILES['file']['error'] . '<br>';
} else {
    move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], 'files/' . $_FILES['file']['name']);
    echo "File uploaded successfully!!";
}

<?php

if (0 < $_FILES['file']['error']) {

echo 'Error: ' . $_FILES['file']['error'] . '<br>';

} else {

move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], 'files/' . $_FILES['file']['name']);

echo "File uploaded successfully!!";

}

Just a 10 lines code 🙂 yes this lines is to have our file uploaded to the files folder on server, we are using move_uploaded_file() function here. if you remember we had send selected file from “file_to_upload” input field.

We are done with the code, find out following tutorial folder structure and complete source code below:

Demo Screen:

if your done with all above steps then go ahead and run the code on your server if not you can download the code from the below link as well.

Download Free Source code:

great tutorial. Which web framework u use sir.

Yogesh Koli says:

July 5, 2016 at 6:16 pm

You’re asking for specific tutorial or regarding website development ?
Although I use laravel framework for development, there lot more tutorials coming related to laravel.

sir, sorry, but can you kindly please explain to me about getting path string of the uploaded images, and inserting it into the database, i’ve been working on your tutorial about CRUD operation using Jquery, and i want to implement image for user, but i am stuck, no image uploaded to my server folder and no path record in database. this is what i’ve tried for the php file:
if(isset($_POST[‘username’]) && isset($_POST[’email’])
&& (isset($_FILES[“file”][“type”])){
$tmp = $_FILES[‘file’][‘tmp_name’];
$Path = “uploads/”.$_FILES[‘file’][‘name’];
if(move_uploaded_file($tmp,$Path))
{
$query = “INSERT INTO users(username, email, image) VALUES(‘$username’, ‘$email’, ‘$Path’, ”)”;
if (!$result = mysql_query($query)) {
echo”No data Inserted!”;
exit(mysql_error());
}
echo “1 Data Added!”;
}
}
am i missing something here or perhaps something inside js file, sir?

Thank you for this tutorial its works really great. Thank you…

Introduction:

What is PHP Asynchronous File Upload?

Create PHP Asynchronous File Upload Demo:

Download Free Source code:

About Yogesh Koli