Unable to copy() image from one folder to another

Question

I am trying to copy an image from one folder to another. I feel that my paths are wrong, but I have tried so many path combinations that I am now unsure whether it is the problem.

I am trying to copy an image (if it exists) from the user_photos folder, into the profile_pics folder. Here are where they are located, as well as the script, known as, change_dp.php , which once called, will execute the copy() .

www > user_data > user_photos > photos_are_here
www > user_data > profile_pics > photos_are_here
www > inc > change_dp.php

Here is change_dp.php :

$all_pics = mysqli_query ($connect, "SELECT * FROM user_photos WHERE username = '$username'");
    $row_query = mysqli_fetch_assoc($all_pics);
            $get_photo_owner = $row_query['username'];
            $get_photo_id = $_GET['id'];

$get_pic_with_id = mysqli_query ($connect, "SELECT * FROM user_photos WHERE id = '$get_photo_id'");
    $row_query2 = mysqli_fetch_assoc($get_pic_with_id);
            $img_url = $row_query2['img_url'];

    $file = $img_url;
    $arrPathInfo = pathinfo($file);
    $shortened_url = $arrPathInfo['basename'];

if (file_exists($file)) {
copy("../../" . $file, "../../profile_pics/" . $shortened_url); 
}

$pro_pic_change = mysqli_query($connect, "UPDATE users SET profile_pic='$shortened_url' WHERE username = '$username'") or die ($connect);
     header("Location: /photos/$get_photo_owner");

Just to illustrate the issue more:

• User uploaded photos (which are stored in user_photos) are stored in there full path in my database, for example, if Alice uploads a file called alice.jpg , it will be stored as user_data/user_photos/alice.jpg . This is why I have varible $shortened_url which will only get the base name of the file ie get the alice.jpg from user_data/user_photos/alice.jpg . I need the $shortened_url because column profile_pics in the database holds just the base name of the image, not the full path.
• With the if statement , I am trying to get the basename of the image, see if an image with the same name in my user_photos file exists, and if it does, copy it into the profile_pics folder and set the basename to profile_pics column via an UPDATE statement. The UPDATE statement works fine, the image name does change in the database, but the image just doesn't copy over, which corrupts the image since it cant find it in the profile_pics folder.

What I have tried:

copy($file, "../profile_pics/" . $shortened_url); 
copy("../../" . $file, "../../profile_pics/" . $shortened_url);
copy($file, "user_data/profile_pics/" . $shortened_url);

None which work.

Edit :

Here's what I want the code to do:

Lets assign values to $file for an example:

$file = user_data/user_photos/alice.jpg

1. See if an image with the name of $file exists in the user_photos folder.
2. If there is a file with the name of alice.jpg in the folder, then copy that image into the profile_pics folder.
3. That's it.

Answer 1

You could use __DIR__ magic constant and then based on that you can go to upper levels in the directory hierarchy, by using realpath() function or even dirname() function. This way it will be less confusing and less error prone.

Eg:

$upOneLevel = realpath(__DIR__."../");
$upTwoLevels = realpath(__DIR__."../../");

So to access your file you shoud use:

$fileRealPath = $upOneLevel."/".$file;
$fileRealDestination = $upOneLevel."user_data/profile_pics/".$shortened_url;

I also recommend to update the data in the DB only if the file exists and the copy command executes successfully:

if (file_exists($fileRealPath)) {
    if(copy($fileRealPath, $fileRealDestination)) {
        //TODO db logic here
    } else {
        //TODO error handling here        
    }
} else {
    //TODO error handling here
}