PHP Function To Get A File Extension From A String

Discussion

1. Phil Thompson

   This looks really useful, thanks.
2. ochronus

   Why reinvent the wheel? We have good ol’ pathinfo() :
   http://hu2.php.net/manual/en/function.pathinfo.php

   Array
   (
   [dirname] => .
   [basename] => some.file.extension
   [extension] => extension
   [filename] => some.file
   )
3. Isaac Van Name

   I came up with this snippet to get the file extension as well, using array functions:
4. Isaac Van Name

   … and it got cut out. Here’s the function, without tags:

   function get_file_extension($file_name) {
      return end(explode('.',$file_name));
   }
5. Arup Malakar

   As mentioned by ochronus the following code does the exact same thing:

   $file = '/tmp/test.php'; 
   echo pathinfo($file, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
   
6. crivion

   or we can do it via end(explode('.', "filename.ext")); easily
7. Rafieldex

   File extension from path:

   function f_extension($fn){
   $str=explode('/',$fn);
   $len=count($str);
   $str2=explode('.',$str[($len-1)]);
   $len2=count($str2);
   $ext=$str2[($len2-1)];
   return $ext;
   }
   
   $extesnion=f_extension("files/file.jpg"); // returns jpg
   

   Try & enjoy!
8. Jorge

   What happens when you try to get the extension of “/etc/init.d/README” with the explode method?

   Just use the pathinfo().
• rafieldex

  Oh come on…i wrote this post quickly.

  function f_extension($fn){
  $str=explode(‘/’,$fn);
  $len=count($str);
    if (strpos($str[($len-1)],'.') === False) return False; // Has not .
  $str2=explode(‘.’,$str[($len-1)]);
  $len2=count($str2);
  $ext=$str2[($len2-1)];
  return $ext;
  }
• Sky

  lol. Why?!
  Just use the pathinfo()!!!!!!

  Do you re-write every function that’s in PHP, including stuff like mktime() ????????
  IT’S RIDICULOUS!
• jack

  I don’t like rhetoric. You asked why? Could be many reasons. You just need some imagination.

  – Didn’t know about pathinfo (could be many reasons for this. New to PHP, came frmo a different language, simply has a knowledge gap)
  – Did not know what pathinfo could do (it’s not well documented)
  – Wrote the routine just for fun to improve programming skills (not used in actual project)
9. Isaac Van Name

   @Jorge: Either way works, and it just ends up being a matter of preference. You have to consider how this function will usually be used on a web application; it will be grabbing the extension and making sure it’s an allowed extension for upload. Thus, the explode method would return something that doesn’t match a valid extension (like your README example), and the file upload would get declined.

   If you’re building a file explorer on the web, sure, use pathinfo(); that’s common sense. If you’re building a web app that takes uploads, then I can’t imagine the explode method would not be faster than pathinfo.
10. Gabriel

    Thanks for sharing !
11. sumit

    @crivion: please explain it with example
12. DaveDisaster

    I’ve run a bunch of microtime() tests, and almost every time pathinfo() is the fastest, by a healthy margin over end/explode. substr/strrchr seems to vary somewhere in the middle.
13. beauty

    There are many way to get file extension. For me, I use
    end(explode('.', $_FILES['fileupload']['name']));
    I think this is easy to understand code from it.
14. wael fareed

    // gif image uploaded
    if (isset($_FILES[‘file’])) {
    $file_extension =$_FILES[‘file’][‘extension’] ;
    $extension = substr(“$file_extension”, 6); // remove the image/ and the gif extension remains.
    echo $extension // return gif
    }
15. sudhir

    Thanks , IT is really very user full.
16. Rajeev

    I always prefer php code functions eg.

    $file_extension=pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
17. Andrew Ensley

    I found this post from Google, and though “wow, what a simple answer.” I then read the comments suggesting alternative methods and gave those a try as well. They all work of course, but I wanted to know what worked *better*, so I benchmarked them. The following is how long it took my server to run each method 1 million times on the string: ‘/var/www/thisisatest.1.2.18.min.js’

    Substr: 0.8037 seconds
    Pathinfo: 1.95027 seconds
    Explode: 2.35024 seconds

    Clearly, the method you posted smoked the competition. I will be using it. Thank you for posting this!
18. jay

    if your doin comparison checks on file ext try

    return strtolower(substr(strrchr($file_name,’.’),1));
19. Richard

    While end(explode(‘.’,$file_name)); is indeed immediately intuitive to even an newbie, you could really help a programmer take a step forward by introducing him/her to the more useful pathinfo($path, $options);

    In addition pathinfo does what it says, so is automatically the winner of the Best Practice award.

    This comes from an advanced php’er who has never used the function until I seen it mentioned here. So thanks to David and all of you for your cross-examination
20. jack

    All the folks complaining about not using pathinfo()….There are times you do not want to use pathinfo(). For instance, when listing filenames on Amazon S3 without going to the trouble of downloading the file onto your server. You don’t have the actual file, so you may just want to parse the string…
• Sky

  Pathinfo accepts strings as a variable,
  so your point is invalid.

  You ALWAYS should use existing PHP function whenever possible.
  Just like in the HTML – if you create a table: use table element, don’t make up one from divs.
21. jack

    @Sky A sincere thanks for the info, but the mini-lecture was not necessary. I’m quite aware that in normal cases the wheel should not be invented. I’m a software engineer who simply comes from a C++ and Objective-C background and don’t know PHP well. PHP is a rather badly designed and unpredictable language, the man page on pathinfo is of no great help.
22. jack

    Sky: A sincere thanks for the info, but the following lecture was not necessary. I’m quite aware that in normal cases the wheel should not be invented. I’m a software engineer who simply comes from a C++ and Objective-C background and doesn’t know PHP well. IMHO PHP is a rather badly designed and unpredictable language, and the man page on pathinfo is rather poor. Paths are PHP are *necessarily* strings with no level of abstraction over it. The manual should have documented whether it requires an actual path or not.
23. Jason Mitchell

    What if you are handling a url and its possible that we have a http://imgur.com/blablabla.jpg?x=15

    Pretty much would never happen but good code will deal with odd data.
24. LeePro

    all methods fail if path has query or hash:
    $filename = “mypic.gif?see=me#now”;
25. Faizal Pribadi

    Yay, pathinfo() Do The Best :D
26. Faizal Pribadi

    Look Code This , This Code Part Of Symfony Dependency Injection Loader

    public function supports($resource, $type = null) {
       return is_string($resource) && 'php' === pathinfo($resource, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
    }
    
27. Tayo

    $filename = 'mypic.gif';
    $ext = pathinfo($filename, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
    

    This is faster based on http://www.cowburn.info/2008/01/13/get-file-extension-comparison/
28. Bhumi

    Thanks. useful
29. Joshua Belanger

    What would I do to remove the .php or .html extension from a string created from a file name? I’m having trouble finding code examples for doing this.