How can I make the PHP write to the file automaticly? - php

Question

I want to save a web page to a text file automatically or at least every second. So I wrote a PHP file like that :
<?php
$homepage = file_get_contents('www.example.com');
echo $homepage;
$myfile = fopen("file.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
while(true) {
fwrite($myfile, $homepage);
}
fclose($myfile);
?>
But it did not work
The file will not be written until the while loop will stop.
Can someone help me with that ? I need the PHP to run all the time or at least for a few minute. How can I do that ?

Answer 1

I'd go for something like this (not tested though)
<?php
header("Refresh:30"); // The page will be refreshed every 30 seconds
// To avoid max_execution_time errors
$myfile = "file.txt";
for ($i=0; $i < 30; $i++) {
$homepage = file_get_contents("http://www.example.com");
echo $homepage;
file_put_contents($myfile, $homepage);
sleep(1); // Do it every second
}
If a second is too much time, you could use usleep instead

Answer 2

That's because you don't close the file in the loop. And you should add some delay too. Change it to this:
<?php
$homepage = file_get_contents('www.example.com');
echo $homepage;
while(true) {
$myfile = fopen("file.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
fwrite($myfile, $homepage);
fclose($myfile);
sleep(1);
}
?>
Note that if you're running this on a webserver, it will exceed the time limit.

Answer 3

First off, maybe you should consider using sleep inside your loop to minimise performance impact. After every write you should invoke flush to persist data onto disk. There is also a risk of overloading target site in a form of DOS attack, so you should be mindful of the consequences.

Answer 4

This is not tested but should word... But honestly your better of using Ajax with a timer to do this.
header("Refresh:60");
function writeToPage($page,$file){
$content = file_get_contents($page);
file_put_contents($file,$content);
}
$page = "www.example.com";
$file = "file.txt";
$write = true;
while( $write === true ) {
sleep(5);
writeToPage($page,$file);
}