Get File Extension in PHP

This short snippet accepts a string, $fileName, and returns a lowercase version of all the text after the string’s last period:

function getExtension($fileName) {
    $arr = explode('.', $fileName);
    if ($arr !== false) {
        return strtolower($arr[count($arr) - 1]);
    } else {
        return false; // No period was found
    }
}

Here is some example output:

• getExtension('hello.JPG') returns .jpg.

• getExtension('example.config.js') returns .js.

• getExtension('hello') returns false, because there is no period.

Conclusion

That’s all! You can pass in any sort of string, such as a file path, file name, or URL.

I wanted to keep this post short, because this is just a concise snippet that does one simple task and does it well.