Uploading and saving a file programmatically to Drupal nodes

Question

I am trying to create a node based on a custom form submission. Everything works great except for the images that get uploaded.

I can capture them fine and set them in the form object cache. When I pass the data into the function to create the node, I get this error:

"The specified file could not be copied, because no file by that name exists. Please check that you supplied the correct filename."

I also receive the error multiple times, despite only submitting one or two images at a time.

Here is the code I am using. $uploads is passed in and is an array of file objects returned from file_save_upload() in a previous step:

if (isset($uploads)) {
    foreach ($uploads as $upload) {
      if (isset($upload)) {
        $file = new stdClass;
        $file->uid = 1;
        $file->uri = $upload->filepath;
        $file->filemime = file_get_mimetype($upload->uri);
        $file->status = 1;  

        $file = file_copy($file, 'public://images');

        $node->field_image[$node->language][] = (array) $file;
      }
    }
  }

  node_save($node);

I also tried this:

if (isset($uploads)) {
    foreach ($uploads as $upload) {
        $upload->status = 1;  

        file_save($upload);

        $node->field_image[$node->language][] = (array) $upload;
      }
    }
  }

  node_save($node);

The second causes a duplicate key error in MySQL on the URI field. Both of these examples I saw in tutorials, but neither are working?

Answer 1

For Drupal 7, I played around with this quite a bit and found the best way (and only way that I've got working) was to use Entity metadata wrappers

I used a managed file form element like so:

  // Add file upload widget
  // Use the #managed_file FAPI element to upload a document.
  $form['response_document'] = array(
    '#title' => t('Attach a response document'),
    '#type' => 'managed_file',
    '#description' => t('Please use the Choose file button to attach a response document<br><strong>Allowed extensions: pdf doc docx</strong>.'),
    '#upload_validators' => array('file_validate_extensions' => array('pdf doc docx')),
    '#upload_location' => 'public://my_destination/response_documents/',
  );

I also pass along the $node object in my form as a value

$form['node'] = array('#type' => 'value', '#value' => $node);

Then in my submission handler I simply do the following:

  $values = $form_state['values'];
  $node = $values['node'];
  // Load the file and save it as a permanent file, attach it to our $node.
  $file = file_load($values['response_document']);
  if ($file) {
    $file->status = FILE_STATUS_PERMANENT;
    file_save($file);

    // Attach the file to the node.
    $wrapper = entity_metadata_wrapper('node', $node);
    $wrapper->field_response_files[] = array(
      'fid' => $file->fid,
      'display' => TRUE,
      'description' => $file->filename,
    );
    node_save($node);
  }