PHP SSH2 operations failing when attempting to upload file to server - php

Question

I am currently struggling with using the SSH2 built-in libraries for PHP (running version 5.5). I am trying to upload a file to an SFTP server as the title states however I keep getting a "stream operation failed" error message.
After attempting to debug the code itself the connection works, the sftp resource is assigned an ID correctly, however when fopen is called for writing the file directly to the remote server it fails.
// open Live environment if we are not in dev
$connection = ssh2_connect($this->_settings['source_host'], 22);
$authSuccess = ssh2_auth_password($connection, $this- >_settings['source_user'], $this->_settings['source_password']);
$sftp = ssh2_sftp($connection);
And finally the fopen() call:
if($operation == 'export') {
$handle = fopen("ssh2.sftp://".$sftp."/remotecopy/IN/".$filename, $mode);
}
I added debug messages in my own code to verify if the data from the _settings array is also used correctly and it is, however I can't explain the stream error.
Message: fopen(): Unable to open ssh2.sftp://Resource id #173/PATH GOES HERE/filename.xxx on remote host
Message: fopen(ssh2.sftp://Resource id #173/PATH GOES HERE/filename.xxx): failed to open stream: operation failed
As a note the file does not exist on the remote host but according to my knowledge 'w' mode in PHP fopen() should create the file if it does not exist.
I can't use the other PHP library as our whole project uses the builtin ssh2 libraries and the person in charged told me to not use it as it works fine everywhere else.

Answer 1

i think you'd have an easier time if you used phpseclib, a pure PHP SFTP implementation. eg.
<?php
include('Net/SFTP.php');
$sftp = new Net_SFTP('www.domain.tld');
if (!$sftp->login('username', 'password')) {
exit('Login Failed');
}
// puts a three-byte file named filename.remote on the SFTP server
$sftp->put('filename.remote', 'xxx');
// puts an x-byte file named filename.remote on the SFTP server,
// where x is the size of filename.local
$sftp->put('filename.remote', 'filename.local', NET_SFTP_LOCAL_FILE);
?>
One of the nice things about phpseclib is it's logging so if that doesn't work you can do define('NET_SSH2_LOGGING', NET_SSH2_LOG_COMPLEX); after including Net/SFTP.php and then do echo $sftp->getLog() after the point where it fails. That might provide some insight into what's going on if it still isn't working.

Answer 2

The answer was easy, I had incorrectly formatted path on the remote server. After verifying my settings it works just fine.
Thank you all for the hints and help.