php curl not saving file to location - php

Question

I have been searching for an answer for this all day, but with no luck!
I want to download/copy an image from the web to a location on my server, The code below doesn't seam to throw any errors other than the image is just not saving to the required or any directory.
As you can see I am using cURL to get the image and the variable $contents is returning true (1) so I am assuming the script works but I am actually missing something.
Many thanks in advance for your help. :-)
$dir = URL::base() . "/img/products/";
$imgSrc = "an image on the web";
$file = fopen($dir, "wb");
$headers[] = 'Accept: image/gif, image/x-bitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg';
$headers[] = 'Connection: Keep-Alive';
$headers[] = 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8';
$user_agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)';
$ch = curl_init($imgSrc);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $file); // location to write to
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 60);
$contents = curl_exec($ch);
$curl_errno = curl_errno($ch);
$curl_error = curl_error($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($lfile);
if ($curl_errno > 0)
{
Log::write("CURL", "cURL Error (".$curl_errno."): ".$curl_error);
}
else
{
Log::write("CURL", "Data received: " . $contents);
}
return;

Answer 1

Provide the file the writing access to PHP FILE using curl to store the contents. This can be done in three ways:
If you have the terminal access then use chmod to provide the writing access
If you have the CPanel access then use directory explorer then provide the writing access to the file by changing file properties.
You must have the access to FTP and change the file access attributes and provide the writing access.

Answer 2

Don't use curl.
If all you need to do is download an image, go for "file_get_contents" instead.
It's dead easy:
$fileContents = file_get_contents("https://www.google.com/images/srpr/logo4w.png");
File::put('where/to/store/the/image.jpg', $fileContents);

Answer 3

function saveImageToFile($image_url,$output_filename)
{
$ch = curl_init ($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER,1);
$raw=curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
if(file_exists($saveto))
{
unlink($saveto); //Saves over files
}
$fp = fopen($saveto,'x');
fwrite($fp, $raw);
fclose($fp);
}

Answer 4

Your problem is quite simple, and I have no idea how everyone else ignored it. It is Laravel-specific. Your $dir variable returns an HTTP resource identifier. What you need is a filesystem identifier.
For laravel, change your URL::to() to path("public") to tell Laravel to stop using HTTP URIs and instead take the local path to the public folder (/your/laravel/setup/path/public/).
code
$dir = path("public") . "img/products/";
$imgSrc = "an image on the web";
$file = fopen($dir . substr($imgSrc,strrpos("/",$imgSrc)+1), "wb");
$headers[] = 'Accept: image/gif, image/x-bitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg';
$headers[] = 'Connection: Keep-Alive';
$headers[] = 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8';
$user_agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)';
$ch = curl_init($imgSrc);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $file); // location to write to
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 60);
$contents = curl_exec($ch);
$curl_errno = curl_errno($ch);
$curl_error = curl_error($ch);
curl_close($ch);
if ($curl_errno > 0)
{
Log::write("CURL", "cURL Error (".$curl_errno."): ".$curl_error);
}
else
{
Log::write("CURL", "Data received: " . $contents);
fwrite($file,$contents);
fclose($file);
}
return;

Answer 5

OK, finally got it all working and here is the code if anyone else ever tries to do the same sort of thing!
I was missing these parts:
$dir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/img/products/";
and
fwrite($file,$contents);
So here is my final code... credit to Sébastien for pointing me in the right direction. Thanks.
if($method == 'save')
{
$productId = Input::get('pId');
$removeProductImages = DB::table('product_ref_images')->where('product_id', '=', $productId)->delete();
$imagesData = Input::get('imageRefs');
$dir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/img/products/";
$sortOrder = 0;
for ($i=0; $i < count($imagesData); $i++) {
$imgSrc = trim($imagesData[$i]['imgSrc']);
$imgId = trim($imagesData[$i]['imgId']);
$file = fopen($dir . basename($imgSrc), "wb");
$headers[] = 'Accept: image/gif, image/x-bitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg';
$headers[] = 'Connection: Keep-Alive';
$headers[] = 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8';
$user_agent = 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)';
$ch = curl_init($imgSrc);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $file);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 60);
$contents = curl_exec($ch);
$curl_errno = curl_errno($ch);
$curl_error = curl_error($ch);
curl_close($ch);
if ($curl_errno > 0)
{
Log::write("CURL", "cURL Error (".$curl_errno."): ".$curl_error);
break;
}
else
{
fwrite($file,$contents);
fclose($file);
$imageIds = DB::table('product_ref_images')->order_by('image_id', 'desc')->first();
if($imageIds == null)
{
$imageIds = 0;
}
else
{
$imageIds = $imageIds->image_id;
}
$updateImages = DB::table('product_ref_images')
->insert(array(
'image_id' => $imageIds + 1,
'product_id' => $productId,
'flickr_image_id' => $imgId,
'sort_order' => $sortOrder++,
'local_storage_url' => $dir . basename($imgSrc),
'created_at' => date("Y-m-d H:i:s"),
'updated_at' => date("Y-m-d H:i:s")
));
}
}
return Response::json('Complete');
}

Answer 6

Remove this line:
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
You're storing the response to a file, not to the return variable. Otherwise, you have to save it yourself (like you did in the other solution).