uploading multiple image files to php mysql gallery

Question 1

In your form, add multiple file inputs. One way is to use an array name - image[]

Image to upload: <input type="file" name="image[]" /><br />
Image to upload: <input type="file" name="image[]" /><br />
Image to upload: <input type="file" name="image[]" /><br />
....  // as many as you want. Just be aware of upload_max_filesize, memory_limit, post_max_size etc.
<br />

Then in your uploader.php, wrap your file upload code with a for loop

for($i=0;$i<count($_FILES["image"]["name"]);$i++){

    $fileData = pathinfo(basename($_FILES["image"]["name"][$i]));

     ...

    if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES["image"]["tmp_name"][$i], $target_path))
    {
      ...

      echo "The image {$_FILES['image']['name'][$i]} was successfully uploaded and added to the gallery<br />";

    }
    else
    {
     echo "There was an error uploading the file {$_FILES['image']['name'][$i]}, please try again!<br />";
    }
} // close your foreach

the manual has a great section on common pitfalls when uploading files, especially multiple. http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.common-pitfalls.php

If you want to do multiple of the others, it can be done the same way (I abbreviated the selects to reduce copy/paste) -

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" action="uploader.php" method="POST">

    // 1st set
    Category: <select class="text" name="dataType[]" />
    ...
    </select><br />
    <br />        

    Caption: <input type="text" name="title[]" /><br />
    <br />

    Image to upload: <input type="file" name="image[]" /><br />
    <br /> 

    // 2nd set
    Category: <select class="text" name="dataType[]" />
    ...
    </select><br />
    <br />        

    Caption: <input type="text" name="title[]" /><br />
    <br />

    Image to upload: <input type="file" name="image[]" /><br />
    <br />  

   // and so on, as many as you want  
   ...
    <input type="submit" value="Upload">
</form>

and your php, put the for loop around all the elements

for($i=0;$i<count($_FILES["image"]["name"]);$i++){

    $dataType = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST["dataType"][$i]);  // get the dataType with the same key - $i
    $title = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST["title"][$i]);   // get the title with the same key - $i

    $fileData = pathinfo(basename($_FILES["image"]["name"][$i]));

     ...

    if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES["image"]["tmp_name"][$i], $target_path))
    {
      ...

      echo "The image {$_FILES['image']['name'][$i]} was successfully uploaded and added to the gallery<br />";

    }
    else
    {
     echo "There was an error uploading the file {$_FILES['image']['name'][$i]}, please try again!<br />";
    }
} // close your foreach

edit
you are almost there. Remove the duplicate code above the for loop. Remove basename(), as this is causing your extension to fail, and pathinfo() will return the ['basename'].

<?php
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/connections/dbconnect.php");

for($i=0;$i<count($_FILES["image"]["name"]);$i++){
  if($_FILES["image"]["name"][$i] != ''){ // don't insert if file name empty
    $dataType = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST["dataType"][$i]);
    $title = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST["title"][$i]);

    $fileData = pathinfo($_FILES["image"]["name"][$i]);

    $fileName = uniqid() . '.' . $fileData['extension'];
    $target_path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/images/gallery/" . $fileName;

    while(file_exists($target_path)){
       $fileName = uniqid() . '.' . $fileData['extension'];
       $target_path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/images/gallery/" . $fileName;
    }     

  if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES["image"]["tmp_name"][$i], $target_path)){    // The file is in the images/gallery folder. 
    // Insert record into database by executing the following query:
     $sql="INSERT INTO images (data_type, title, file_name) "."VALUES('$dataType','$title','$fileName')";
     $retval = mysql_query($sql);

    echo "The image {$_FILES['image']['name'][$i]} was successfully uploaded and added to the gallery<br />
     <a href='index.php'>Add another image</a><br />";
  }
  else
  {
   echo "There was an error uploading the file {$_FILES['image']['name'][$i]}, please try again!<br />";
    }
  }
} // close your foreach
?>

Question 2

Apparently, an HTML5 feature that's sadly not supported in Internet Explorer before version 10(!) allows you to do this:

<input name="upload[]" type="file" multiple="multiple" />

This is also valid:

<input name="upload[]" type="file" multiple />

(The end slash is facultative, but I like self-closing tags to have a slash, so I decided to put slashes.)

However there are JavaScript, etc. tools that apparently widen the compatibility. Like this Jquery thing. blueimp.github.io/jQuery-File-Upload

(Source: How to select multiple files with <input type="file">?)

(I was sure there was a simpler, IE-compatible method, but maybe I imagined it. Either way, I apparently left the upload documentation from my teacher at school before leaving for the holidays, so I can't know for sure.)

So... yeah. You have this multiple="multiple" input that does the job. But it's definitely not compatible enough for your needs. Because, you know, not many people have IE 10, and there's a limit to ditching IE. From there on, you have a few choices.

Check for compatibility with multi-file inputs using a tool such as Modernizr, and if the browser is not compatible, then instead of it, you'll display several single-file inputs. Or maybe just one, and then, you'd add another through Javascript when the previous one is used.
Look into that jQuery plugin or other similar tools to "force" browsers to be compatible with your multi-file input.

Usage example a multi-file input:

HTML:

<form method="post" action="upload.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input name="uploads[]" type="file" multiple="multiple" />
    <input type="submit" value="Send" />
</form>

Then in PHP, all your files will be stored where you usually find your single file, except that it'll be an array, now, and you'll access it by adding an additional layer of square brackets. For example, $_FILES['uploads']['name'][0] is your first file.

The following code will allow you to iterate over every single file. Of course, this code only displays every file name, but you can change the content of the loop.

foreach ($_FILES['uploads']['name'] as $filename) {
    echo '<li>' . $filename . '</li>';
}

And inside this loop, you'll process to upload each file as you normally would for a single file.

(Source: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/html/multiple-file-input/)

Question 3

The easiest way is to add multiple file inputs (in one form) with the same name, adding square brackets:

<input type="file" name="image[]">

You can then access the files by adding an incremental number:

$_FILES["image"]["name"][0]

So you put the whole after-upload process into a loop iterating through the files. Please note that in case you do not always submit an image with each file input, some variables (=inputs) will stay empty and you need to change your error handling to not showing an error then. I'd do it like this:

if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES["image"]["tmp_name"][$i], $target_path)) {
     //processing...
} else if (!empty($_FILES["image"]["name"][$i]) {
     //error
}

Question 4

I don't know if I can post links, but i found this looking for a system that upload multiples files, and want to share with all other that are looking for this too.

MySQL

CREATE TABLE `upload_data` (
  `ID` int(5) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `USER_CODE` int(4) unsigned zerofill NOT NULL,
  `FILE_NAME` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  `FILE_SIZE` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  `FILE_TYPE` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`ID`)
)

PHP

<?php
if(isset($_FILES['files'])){
    $errors= array();
    foreach($_FILES['files']['tmp_name'] as $key => $tmp_name ){
        $file_name = $key.$_FILES['files']['name'][$key];
        $file_size =$_FILES['files']['size'][$key];
        $file_tmp =$_FILES['files']['tmp_name'][$key];
        $file_type=$_FILES['files']['type'][$key];  
        if($file_size > 2097152){
            $errors[]='File size must be less than 2 MB';
        }       
        $query="INSERT into upload_data (`USER_ID`,`FILE_NAME`,`FILE_SIZE`,`FILE_TYPE`) VALUES('$user_id','$file_name','$file_size','$file_type'); ";
        $desired_dir="user_data";
        if(empty($errors)==true){
            if(is_dir($desired_dir)==false){
                mkdir("$desired_dir", 0700);        // Create directory if it does not exist
            }
            if(is_dir("$desired_dir/".$file_name)==false){
                move_uploaded_file($file_tmp,"user_data/".$file_name);
            }else{                                  //rename the file if another one exist
                $new_dir="user_data/".$file_name.time();
                 rename($file_tmp,$new_dir) ;               
            }
            mysql_query($query);            
        }else{
                print_r($errors);
        }
    }
    if(empty($error)){
        echo "Success";
    }
}
?>


<form action="" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input type="file" name="files[]" multiple/>
    <input type="submit"/>
</form>

That's it! Hope help someone ^^ Complete explanations and all credits to: http://techstream.org/Web-Development/PHP/Multiple-File-Upload-with-PHP-and-MySQL