making a yearly and monthly subdirectory error

Question

I am using this function in codeigniter to try to check and make directories and sub directories only if they do not exist. Only the k_uploads is made but an error occurs in making the sub directory in the main directory 'k_upoloads'. The structure should be as

    k_uploads (main directory)
       -2012 (subdirectory in main directory - made per year in k_uploads)
          -Jan(subdirectory in 2012 - made every month in 2012)
            -subdirx (subdirectory in Jan - holds the excel files for that month)
          xxyyy.xlsx (month files in subdirx)

Each year and month directories and sub directories should be created. I cant figure where the problem is, it works with plain php but not in codeigniter.

public function makeDir(){
            $labref = $this->uri->segment(3);
            $dirName='k_uploads';
             echo  $store_dir= date('Y').'/'.date('M').'/'.$subdirx;          

             if(!is_dir($dirName))
             $k= mkdir($dirName, 0777);
            if($k){
                echo $dirName. 'dir has been created';
            }else{
                echo 'An error occured';
            }
            if(is_dir($dirName))
                $w=  mkdir($store_dir,0777);
            if($w){
                echo $sore_dir. 'subdirs have been created';
            }else{
               echo 'An error occured';  
            }
        }

Answer 1

mkdir has a recursive flag which can be set. This will create the full path. See PHP: mkdir

so you should use mkdir($store_dir,0777, true)

The function could look something like the following:

public function makeDir(){
  $subdirx = $this->uri->segment(3);
  $store_dir= APPPATH . 'k_uploads/' . date('Y').'/'.date('M').'/'.$subdirx;          

  if(!is_dir($store_dir)) {
    return mkdir($dirName, 0777, true);
  } else {
    return true;
  }
}

Answer 2

In order to do this, you will need to create each sub-directory in a sequence, as PHP will not do this for you. You might want to check if the directory already exists using is_dir() while doing so.

Here's an example:

function createDir($dirToMake) {
   $root = "/home/sites/test/www/";
   $dArray = explode("/",$dirToMake);
   if (file_exists($root) && is_dir($root)) {
       // just a quick check
       if (substr($root,0,-1) !== "/") $root .= "/";
       foreach ($dArray as $v) {
          if (strlen($v) == 0) continue;
          $root = $root.$v."/";
          if (file_exists($root) && is_dir($root)) continue;
          mkdir($root);
       }
   }
   else throw new Exception("Root directory does not exist");
}

This function also allows for the usual mistakes (// being one of them), and will loop through, creating the sub-directory architecture needed if it doesn't exist already.