Trouble with writing to file with php and my home server - php

So, I have this simple little php script. It runs and compiles fine and works the way I want it to on the machine that I coded it. I'm running it on a personal home web-server running Debian 6.0.6, 32bit. It's apache with php. And I know for a fact that php is working on the server.
<?php
$hitsfile = "hits.txt"; #name of file
$filehandle = fopen($hitsfile, 'r') or die ("Couldn't read file."); #Opens file, 'hitsfile' to be read.
$hits = fread($filehandle, 5); #reads file to the introduced variable, 'hits'
fclose($filehandle); #closes file
$hits++; #increments the variable that it read.
$filehandle = fopen($hitsfile, 'w') or die ("Couldn't write to file."); #opens file to be read.
fwrite($filehandle, $hits); #writes the hits variable to file.
fclose($filehandle); #closes file.
echo $hits; #outputs the hits variable.
?>
When I access the file from the server, via a web browser, I get the "Couldn't write to file." error. So then, it's opening the file properly, and reading it. And when it opens it to write, it fails. I'm assuming this is some sort of problem with permissions or something. I'm sort of at a loss as to how to solve the issue. Any ideas? Assistance would be greatly appreciated! I've googled for a couple days now, and I can't solve the issue. I'm a php 'noob' and I'm very new to running a linux-based web-server, but hey, you gotta learn somehow. :*l

tried to check the permissions to the file? The Linux file system have a very strict permission system. Write on terminal:
ls -la /path/to/my/file.txt
This would give you your permissions on the left column. Please read this article to be sure, and check if Apache have the "write" permissions to the file. If not, use the chmod command to give Apache access to the file (or the chown command, to change the owner of this file to apache, if the owner of this file have writing permissions).

Related

Opening/Reading a local file from PHP Web Application

I feel like this should be a pretty straightforward process.
I have the following code:
<?php
$filename = "c:/TestFolder/config.txt";
echo "Attempting to read: ".$filename."<br/>";
$fh = fopen($filename, 'r') or die("file doesnt exist");
$readtext = fread($fh, filesize($filename));
fclose($fh);
echo "The Text is: ".$readtext;
?>
I have checked that I do indeed have "config.txt" in a folder called "TestFolder" on my C:/ drive... but I keep getting an error that the file doesn't exist.
I checked my PHPInfo to ensure that "allow_url_fopen" is turned on.
I have also tried different file path variations, such as:
C:\\TestFolder\\config.txt
C:\/TestFolder\/config.txt
This doesn't seem to make a difference.
Any idea what might be preventing me from opening this file?
Edits:
It should be noted that this file is uploaded to my web host, while I am attempting to access a file on my local machine. Not sure if this changes things at all.
This is not possible. "local files" are files on the server where PHP is running, not the client running the web browser. While they might be the same machine when you're testing locally, once you upload the script to a web host, PHP tries to read files on the web host, not your machine.
The only way for PHP to access a file on the client machine is for the application to upload it.

dbase_open error on deleting rows from remote file

I hope you can help me with my problem.
I have a local site that reads data from DBF files on a terminal within the network. So what I did, I shared the DBF files on a PC running Windows XP, with full read/write permission.
When the PHP script is run on the Ubuntu server, it will first ping the PC on the network. After confirming that it is connected, it will mount the shared files within the server. Please note that the directory /mnt has 777 permissions and it is set to subdirectories as well. The owner is also www-data which is the user for PHP.
The script is able to read the data from the DBF files using this setup. I use the below script to read the data from the dbf file:
$db1 = dbase_open("/mnt/test.dbf", 0) or die(mysql_error());
for($counter=1;$counter<=dbase_numrecords($db1);$counter++){
$dbf_data = dbase_get_record_with_names($db1, $counter) or die(mysql_error());
// insert data to MYSQL database
}
The script above works, but only for reading the data. When I change to:
dbase_open("/mnt/test.dbf", 2)
it should have read and write access, However it does not let me remove the rows that were already read. I use:
for($count=1;$count<=dbase_numrecords($db1);$count++){
dbase_delete_record($db1, $count);
}
dbase_pack($db1);
but it doesnt work. I also tried to put dbase_pack inside the loop, but still the same. Here is a screenshot of the error:
Hope you can help. Thanks in advance!

Windows Server: PHP Script unable to open and write file in Windows Server 2012

Is my first time working with Windows server 2012 and I am having a hard time trying to get a PHP script working. I have a PHP script that opens a JSON file, write the file and close it. Everything runs well but when I try to open a file in 'writing' mode an error is generated.
Here is the line where it fails:
$myfile = fopen("master.json", "r+") or die("Unable to open file!");
When I open the files using "r" it opens without any issues, but when I try to open the file using "r+", "w", "w+", "a+", "x+" or "c+" is "unable to open file".
The PHP version on my server is 5.5.112.0.
Is there any permission issue I should be aware of? Something that I am missing?
Any help will be appreciated.
Thank you!
The user running the webserver should need access to the file folder to be able to create the file.
Can you create a file with global write permissions and then write to it?

PHP cannot access local file

I'm trying to simply write to a text file with PHP and every time I try it doesn't return an error but just doesn't write. I'm doing...
$fp = fopen('file.txt', 'w');
fwrite($fp, '1') or die('error');
fclose($fp);
And very time it returns "error". file.txt is definitely in the same directory as the PHP file. I figured PHP couldn't get access to the file. I'm using Windows Server 2008. Does anyone know what the problem could be?
Two things can be happening.
One, consider setting the full path to the file within the directory like this; change /full/path/to/the/file/ to match the actual full path to the file:
$fp = fopen('/full/path/to/the/file/file.txt', 'w');
fwrite($fp, '1') or die('error');
fclose($fp);
Next, does the file itself have permissions that allow the server itself to access it. Remember, the Apache server will run as another user other than you. So need to make sucre the ownership & permissions match the Apache user.

PHP file doesn't rewrite

I make a site map, and make it with php file, that generate it from mysql. I change host and now I have problem with writing into file. I can't understand something.
Here is my example:
<?php
$xml = 'bla bla xml'; //... some xml generating code
$fp = fopen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/my_site_map.xml', 'w');
if($fp)
echo 'we opened it';
else
echo 'we failed';
$fwrite=fwrite($fp, $xml, strlen($xml));
if($fwrite==false)
echo "another fail";
fclose($fp);
echo "we done";
?>
The question is: my file my_site_map.xml have a permission 664 (rw-rw-r--), and I can't use this script if I open this php page from browser, so, if I try to do this I'll see: "we failed another fail we done"; But if I open this through crontab and see a log file, I can see this: "we opened it we done". I want exactly this but the main problem is that the file isn't have been rewritten. Why? And how can I fix this? Thanks.
My server is nginx not an Apache, didn't thought that this info will valuable
Well I don't have enough rep to comment so this will have to be an answer.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say the file is owned by your user or root, not the process that is running the webserver. Nor is the file owned by the group the webserver process is run under.
So either chown/chgrp the file to be owned by the apache(?!) process running, e.g. chown apache file or set the file to have write permissions to everyone, e.g. chmod 666 file
Don't chmod 777 as commented above unless it's an executable file and you want anyone to be able to run it. The 1st solution is a better practice than just giving anyone read access to a file.
Edit: In comment to the comments on the original answer above, if the file isn't an executable then don't give it 7 for any permisions. 6 is read/write and is suitable for a text file you are opening to write to (even 2 is if it comes to that).
Edit 2: Try catching any exceptions that your fopen function runs in a try catch block:
try {
$fp = fopen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/my_site_map.xml', 'w');
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo "The error is" . $e->getMessage();
}
For PHP code here are the links to change it on the fly. You can change it to what ever make your edits then change it back as needed.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.chmod.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.chown.php
http://php.net/manual/en/function.chgrp.php
Examples are included on each link with the documentations. Find the permissions that works best for what your doing. There isn't a one size fits all for permissions since it really depends on your end product (web app, page, what ever).

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