PHP:
Checking if a directory exists

How to:

The native way to check if a directory exists in PHP is by using the is_dir() function. This function takes a filepath as its argument and returns true if the directory exists and is a directory, or false otherwise.

$directoryPath = "/path/to/your/directory";

if(is_dir($directoryPath)) {
    echo "The directory exists.";
} else {
    echo "The directory does not exist.";
}

Sample Output:

The directory exists.

Or, if the directory doesn’t exist:

The directory does not exist.

Although PHP’s standard library is robust enough for most directory and file manipulation tasks, you might sometimes find yourself in need of a more comprehensive solution. For such cases, a popular third-party library is the Symfony Filesystem Component. It offers a wide range of file system utilities, including a straightforward way to check if a directory exists.

First, you’ll need to install the Symfony Filesystem component. If you’re using Composer (a dependency manager for PHP), you can run the following command in your project directory:

composer require symfony/filesystem

After installing the Symfony Filesystem component, you can use it to check if a directory exists like so:

use Symfony\Component\Filesystem\Filesystem;

$filesystem = new Filesystem();
$directoryPath = '/path/to/your/directory';

if($filesystem->exists($directoryPath)) {
    echo "The directory exists.";
} else {
    echo "The directory does not exist.";
}

Sample Output:

The directory exists.

Or, if the directory doesn’t exist:

The directory does not exist.

Both methods provide reliable ways to check for the existence of a directory in PHP. The choice between using PHP’s built-in functions or a third-party library like Symfony’s Filesystem component depends on your project’s specific needs and whether you require additional filesystem manipulations that might be more efficiently handled by the library.