Write to tmp folder - php

Question

EDIT 1
This question involves the user of the MANGOPAY API. My problem is that I cannot get the API to write to the tmp folder.
I have succeeded in getting the API to write to http://fakedomain.com/apifolder/blank.txt and getting the appropriate output.
I then ran the script http://fake.com/apifolder/demos/iswrite.php on http://fakedomain.com/apifolder/blank.txt to have minimal working code I could test on the tmp folder. Here is the code in the script:
<?php
$filename = 'blank.txt';
echo "<br>";
file_exists($filename);
echo "<br>";
if (file_exists($filename)) {
echo "The file $filename exists";
} else {
echo "The file $filename does not exist";
}
echo "<br>";
if (is_writable($filename)) {
echo 'The file is writable';
} else {
echo 'The file is not writable';
}
?>
It gives me the output
The file blank.txt exists
The file is writable
so all good there. I created the following file with the following permissions using Filezilla:
In the script http://fake.com/apifolder/demos/iswrite.php I have changed the filename variable to $filename = 'http://fake.com/tmp/creative/blank.txt';. It gives me the following output:
The file http://fake.com/tmp/creative/blank.txt does not exist
The file is not writable
Also, allow_url_fopen is on.
I don't fully understand URL structures, so maybe the problem lies there? The tmp folder I am trying to access is on the same level as my public_html folder. Maybe I am writing my URLs wrong?
Put in another way, does the tmp folder have to be outside the public_html folder? Would there be any purpose to this? Or can I have create my own tmp folder within public_html where it is already working?
ORIGINAL QUESTION
The original question was poorly written. Please see EDIT 1
I am playing with the sandbox of an API (MangoPay). I have included my ClientId and ClientPassword which seems to work.
The API also says...
You also need to set a folder path in $api->Config->TemporaryFolder
that SDK needs to store temporary files. This path should be outside
your www folder. It could be /tmp/ or /var/tmp/ or any other location
that PHP can write to.
I have created one at:
ftp://fakedomain#fakedomain/tmp/fakefoldername
I am running the php script from my desktop using Terminal. The output it is giving me is
Cannot create or write to file
ftp://fakedomain#fakedomain/tmp/fakefoldername
even though I have set permissions to 777.
Any idea of why I am getting this error?

Answer 1

I am guessing the library in question is this one, and the error you are getting is this exception:
if (!is_writable($this->GetPathToTemporaryFolder()))
throw new \MangoPay\Libraries\Exception('Cannot create or write to file ' . $this->GetPathToTemporaryFolder());
So basically we seem to be debugging a call to is_writable().
make sure allow_url_fopen is on
if applicable, make sure the URL includes the FTP password
make sure the folder exists and the FTP account has write permissions (777 should suffice...)

Answer 2

Generally speaking a temp dir is supposed to be located on the same machine as your code. Using FTP is less than ideal. Are you not able to use a local directory?
You'll notice in the MangoPay documentation it shows a local dir:
https://github.com/Mangopay/mangopay2-php-sdk
$api->Config->TemporaryFolder = '/some/path/';
You should probably stick to that, instead of using a remote server via FTP.

Answer 3

An out-of-the-box Linux machine running Ubuntu 14.04 has the following user and permission settings
drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 4096 nov 9 00:56 tmp//
And the dummy directory
drwxrwxr-x 2 eric eric 4,0K nov 9 00:49 fakefoldername/
In case of switching to 777 permission set (as you said, you have already done this), that would be
drwxrwxrwx 2 eric eric 4,0K nov 9 00:49 fakefoldername/
The point to notice here is that if you used chmod 777 fakefoldername it changes the permission set only to the directory without touching any of the files/directories in fakefoldername (use chmod -R 777 fakefoldername). Another point to remember is that directories leading to the fakefoldername also need to have sufficient perms. For this particular case, check if /tmp folder has them, fix if necessary
sudo chmod 1777 tmp/
Also, as stated above, I would try to make another directory in /var directory and see how things are going then (an nice answer why to or not to choose /var/tmp over /tmp here).
For others: the SDK that is used is probably https://github.com/Mangopay/mangopay2-php-sdk
There might be some hints in the somewhat similar answers below:
http://forum.odin.com/threads/error-message-cant-create-write-to-file-tmp-after-overflow-tmp.296376/
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/39466/vsftpd-553-could-not-create-file-permissions

Answer 4

Most likely, your apache dont have permissions to write that folder, you have to be sure that you are creating that directory with same user (in your case, apache) and also chmod.