Uploading Multiple Files in PHP – Fixing the Array Indices

PHP inherently makes parsing an array of uploaded files more difficult than it needs to be due to the ordering of it’s array indices. Below is a quick example array:

$_FILES['fieldname']['name'][1] 		= 'uploadedfile.jpg';
$_FILES['fieldname']['name'][2] 		= 'uploadedfile2.jpg';
$_FILES['fieldname']['type'][1] 		= 'image/jpeg';
$_FILES['fieldname']['type'][2] 		= 'image/jpeg';
$_FILES['fieldname']['tmp_name'][1] 	= '/tmp/rAnDOmCHaRs';
$_FILES['fieldname']['tmp_name'][2] 	= '/tmp/RANdOmcHArs';
$_FILES['fieldname']['error'][1] 		= 0;
$_FILES['fieldname']['error'][2] 		= 0;
$_FILES['fieldname']['size'][1] 		= 1427;
$_FILES['fieldname']['size'][2] 		= 1576;

To combat this, we could create a function to reassemble the multi-dimensional array so that it is based on index rather than key. This allows for easier iteration of files. Here’s an example of the reindex $_FILES['fieldname'] array: more »