How to upload image in CodeIgniter?

It seems the problem is you send the form request to welcome/do_upload, and call the Welcome::do_upload() method in another one by $this->do_upload().

Hence when you call the $this->do_upload(); within your second method, the $_FILES array would be empty.

And that’s why var_dump($data['upload_data']); returns NULL.

If you want to upload the file from welcome/second_method, send the form request to the welcome/second_method where you call $this->do_upload();.

Then change the form helper function (within the View) as follows1:

// Change the 'second_method' to your method name
echo form_open_multipart('welcome/second_method');

File Uploading with CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter has documented the Uploading process very well, by using the File Uploading library.

You could take a look at the sample code in the user guide; And also, in order to get a better understanding of the uploading configs, Check the Config items Explanation section at the end of the manual page.

Also there are couple of articles/samples about the file uploading in CodeIgniter, you might want to consider:

Just as a side-note: Make sure that you’ve loaded the url and form helper functions before using the CodeIgniter sample code:

// Load the helper files within the Controller
$this->load->helper('form');
$this->load->helper('url');

// Load the helper files within the application/config/autoload
$autoload['helper'] = array('form', 'url');



1. The form must be “multipart” type for file uploading. Hence you should use `form_open_multipart()` helper function which returns:

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