CakePHP 3: How to check if file or image exists - cakephp

Question

I am just trying to check if an image exists or not, I can do it by using PHP. For example:-
$file = WWW_ROOT .'uploads' . DS . 'employee' . DS .'_'.check.jpg;
$file_exists = file_exists($file);
It's working fine for me. But I have tried also tried using elementExists like this:-
if($this->elementExists("../".$employees->front_image))
{
echo $this->Html->image("../".$employees->front_image); // image output fine without condition.
}
// Here $employees->front_image = uploads/employee/employeename.jpg
This check is not working. How can I do this in CakePHP?

Answer 1

CakePHP is written in PHP, so if you already have a simple solution like file_exists() use that. So you can write something like this:-
if (file_exists(WWW_ROOT . $employees->front_image)):
echo $this->Html->image('../' . $employees->front_image);
endif;
elementExists() is intended for checking that a View element exists, not if files exist in the webroot, so should not be used like you are trying. It does do a file_exists() check, but this scans all available View element paths only.

Answer 2

I think this works in Cake 3 (you should do this in afterFind method IMO):
// Create a new file with 0644 permissions
$file = new File('/path/to/file.php', true, 0644);
if ($file->exists()) {
//do something
}
$file->close();
Your way is checking whether view element exists or not.

Answer 3

This worked for me:
Q: How to check if image exists on remote url or not?
Explanation:
$rfile will take url
$check will open the file with read rights
If file exists then it will print "File exists" else "Doesn't exists".
code:
<?php
// Remote file url
$rFile = 'https://www.example.com/files/test.pdf';
// Open the file
$check = #fopen($rFile, 'r');
// Check if the file exists
if(!$check){
echo 'File does not exist';
}else{
echo 'File exists';
}
?>