PHP File checking always returning false

Question

This bit of code reads from an RSS feed and shoulfd detect if an image exisists on the server or not:

<?php
$feedURL = 'http://www.goapr.com/news/category/product-release/feed/';
$sxml = @simplexml_load_file($feedURL);
if($sxml){
    $i=0;
    foreach($sxml->channel as $channel){
        foreach($channel->item as $item){
            //if($i==6){break;}
            if($item->prodimg=="~"){break;}
            if($item->prodpage=="~"){break;}
            $i += 1;

            $file = 'http://www.goapr.co.uk'. $item->prodimg; 

            if (file_exists($file)) {
            echo "The file $file exists";
            } else {
            echo "The file $file does not exist";
            }

        }
    }
}else{
    echo 'Sorry there was an error. The recent products will return shortly.';
}
?>

Many of the images do exist, but it returns all images not found:

Its not the same as: How to check if a file exists from a url as the files are on the same filesystem as this PHP page.

file_exists only works on the local filesystem. I personally use cURL to open a connection and get the info and check if the response is 404, though checking if `fopen` succeeds usually is enough. — apokryfos, Mar 11 '17 at 19:28
Hi Thanks. These files are on the same file system as this PHP page, does this help? — Dan Sewell, Mar 11 '17 at 19:32
Possible duplicate of [How check if file exists from the url](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7684771/how-check-if-file-exists-from-the-url) — Ruben, Mar 11 '17 at 19:33
You need to check them by their local path and not URL then e.g. `$_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]."path/to/pictures/"...` — apokryfos, Mar 11 '17 at 19:33

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '17 at 19:41

If you need to check if a file on the local filesystem exists you should refer to it via it's local path and not its URL, something like:

$file = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]."/path/to/images/".$item->prodimg;

Note that the DOCUMENT_ROOT is the root path as set up by the webserver host (which means it may not work in the commandline.

You can also use __DIR__."/".$item->prodimg if the images are in the same directory as the currently running script.

PHP File checking always returning false

1 Answers1