How do I get the path for public://

Question

I need to get the path for public:// at runtime. Is there a function I can use to get it?

Answer 1

You can use the following code, to obtain the real path of public://.

if ($wrapper = file_stream_wrapper_get_instance_by_uri('public://')) {
  $realpath = $wrapper->realpath();
  // ...
}

This code is the simplified version of the code used by file_create_url(), with the following differences:

• It doesn't allow third-party modules to alter the URL, since the OP is asking for the path associated with public://
• It doesn't check the URI contains ://, since this is clearly true
• It doesn't check the URI is a root-relative URI, since this is clearly false for public://
• It doesn't check the URI is protocol relative, since this is clearly false in the OP's case
• It doesn't check the URI is not a properly formatted stream, since public:// is a properly formatted stream
• It doesn't check if the scheme is http or https, since in this case is public
• It doesn't call $wrapper->getExternalUrl() since the OP is asking for the path, not for the URL

If the OP wanted the URL for public://, I would have used the following code, which is still a simplified version of the code used by the Drupal function, which needs to be more generic.

if ($wrapper = file_stream_wrapper_get_instance_by_uri('public://')) {
  $url = $wrapper->getExternalUrl();
}

Answer 2

You can use the file_create_url function.

$uri = 'public://';
$path= file_create_url($uri)

Answer 3

In case if you are using only local files (not remote!) you can also try drupal_realpath()

$path = 'public://custom_map';
drupal_realpath($path);

It will return:

D:\Work\OpenServer\domains\local.testsite.com\sites\default\files\custom_map

Answer 4

See the following examples:

$scheme = file_uri_scheme($file);

if ($scheme && file_stream_wrapper_valid_scheme($scheme)) {
  $wrapper = file_stream_wrapper_get_instance_by_scheme($scheme);
  $path = $wrapper->getLocalPath($file);
}

or:

$wrapper = file_stream_wrapper_get_instance_by_uri($uri);
$path = $wrapper->getDirectoryPath() . "/" . file_uri_target($uri);
print $path;

Check API for DrupalPublicStreamWrapper.

Using file_create_url() doesn't work in all cases (as the other answers suggest), because the returned URL doesn't have to be on the same server. And using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] works only for certain server configurations.

If you don't want to use stream wrappers, you may try simpler solution:

$path = variable_get('file_public_path', conf_path() . '/files') . '/' . file_uri_target($uri);

Otherwise if you need something that works more generally, check @hannanxp's solution:

$wrapper = file_stream_wrapper_get_instance_by_uri($uri);
if ($wrapper instanceof DrupalLocalStreamWrapper) {
  $path = $wrapper->getDirectoryPath() . '/' . file_uri_target($uri);
}
else {
  // This does not appear to be a local file so there's no such thing as
  // a relative path; do appropriate error handling here.
}

Read more: How can I convert a file uri to relative path?

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Related:

• Why drupal_realpath('public://') returns sites/all/modules/current_module/sites/default/files path?
• How do I get the public url of a file from the uri or filename