My mkdir() function tells me I don't have permission

Question

I am trying to create a directory that stores all the user's profile pictures. Whenever I click the Upload button it says : Warning: mkdir(): Permission denied in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/testing/account_settings.php on line 60

Here is the mkdir() code:

$chars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789";
$rand_dir_name = substr(str_shuffle($chars), 0, 15);
mkdir("userdata/profile_pics/$rand_dir_name");

I tried changing the permissions:

mkdir("userdata/profile_pics/$rand_dir_name", 0777);

I still get Permission denied. What am I doing wrong?

PS: Full code:

<?php
if (isset($_FILES['profilepic'])) {
    if (((@$_FILES['profilepic'] ['type']=='image/jpeg') || (@$_FILES['profilepic']     ['type']=='image/png') || (@$_FILES['profilepic'] ['type']=='image/gif')) &&     (@$_FILES['profilepic'] ['size'] < 1048576)) {
        $chars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789";
        $rand_dir_name = substr(str_shuffle($chars), 0, 15);
        mkdir("userdata/profile_pics/$rand_dir_name", 0777);
    } else {
    echo "Upload failed";
    }
}
?>

Upload form:

<form action="" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <img src="<?php echo $profile_pic; ?>" width="70"><br>
    <input type="file" name="profilepic"><br>
    <input type="submit" name="uploadpic" value="Upload Image">
</form>

Answer 1

The command

mkdir("userdata/profile_pics/$rand_dir_name", 0777);

will only set the permissions for the newly created directory. You need to change the permissions of the directory you are trying to create the folder in.

Answer 2

Try to cd into your profile pics directory first (and also make sure you have write permissions in there), then create the directory in there.

chdir('userdata/profile_pics'); // Make sure this is writable
mkdir($rand_dir_name, 0755);

Unless you want to make the folder globally writable by any user on your system, chmod 755 should be enough to allow uploading into the directory by the web server.