FileUpload with mysqli insert

When I use serverFileName to return the value of the filename for insertion into the database, the file gets ulpoaded and forced to lower case, however the value of the filename string keeps the case of the filename from the client.

That doesn't usually happen... but to account for it you can use strtolower() around the file name reference to force it to all lower case when being inserted to the database as well.

It seems to be an even stranger issue. At the moment I am uploading files that are getting renamed, however they are not being uploaded to the absolute server path that is specified for the upload. However it is renaming the file, which indicates that the file is being uploaded somewhere on the server and seeing that it already exists, incrementing the filename by one.

i know it sounds lame, but i dont know where these files are being uploaded. maybe off the root of the entire servers folder.

Ok, ive found my issue and it seems as though I can not specify the full server path as the upload directory:

"/home/username/subhtmlfolder/"

Can I not reference the by absolute path for the upload directory string?

no, you cannot reference the absolute path for the upload folder, you should use the relative path.