PHP - Convert File system path to URL

Question

I often find that I have files in my projects that need to be accessed from the file system as well as the users browser. One example is uploading photos. I need access to the files on the file system so that I can use GD to alter the images or move them around. But my users also need to be able to access the files from a URL like example.com/uploads/myphoto.jpg.

Because the upload path usually corresponds to the URL I made up a function that seems to work most of the time. Take these paths for example:

File System /var/www/example.com/uploads/myphoto.jpg

URL http://example.com/uploads/myphoto.jpg

If I had a variable set to something like /var/www/example.com/ then I could subtract it from the filesystem path and then use it as the URL to the image.

/**
 * Remove a given file system path from the file/path string.
 * If the file/path does not contain the given path - return FALSE.
 * @param   string  $file
 * @param   string  $path
 * @return  mixed
 */
function remove_path($file, $path = UPLOAD_PATH) {
    if(strpos($file, $path) !== FALSE) {
        return substr($file, strlen($path));
    }
}

$file = /var/www/example.com/uploads/myphoto.jpg;

print remove_path($file, /var/www/site.com/);
//prints "uploads/myphoto.jpg"

Does anyone know of a better way to handle this?

Answer 1

More accurate way (including host port) would be to use this

function path2url($file, $Protocol='http://') {
    return $Protocol.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].str_replace($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], '', $file);
}