So I know how to upload a file to a web-server with PHP. Instead of uploading it though, I just want to read the data from the file and use it, WITHOUT the upload part. Could someone link me up or give me an example plz?
from HTML, the file is always uploaded to the server, to a temp directory. if from PHP you don't move it to another directory, it will be deleted later, but you can still use it and read it on the script that handles the upload, as shown in the example of is_uploaded_file()
The only way to do that is to send the data of the file via POST and work with it via something like
$postData = file_get_contents( 'php://input' );
PHP is a server-side language, which means it either needs a server-side copy of the file (since it can't access the client) or you need to send parts of the file via common HTTP request methods that PHP can work with (POST or even GET)
There may be a way using JavaScript, but I can't think of any
a javascript possible solution:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/FileReader
not cross-browser, works only in firefox and webkit html5 api compatible versions
Related
I'm trying to set up a file upload for my website but I'm not sure what I'd need to get this to work overall. I'm trying to use Jquery File Upload but I can't seem to get the files to upload to my server. It looks like I might need something else to get it to run but I'm not sure what. Any suggestions?
There are three "sides" to a file upload.
First is client-side: You need to have a form that can upload files (so you need to set the enctype attribute of your form element, and set your action to post).
Second is server-side: You need something that can handle the file upload. Assuming you're using a server with PHP, you can access the file via $_FILES['filename']. Google has a vast array of example for handling file uploads.
Third is server-side (again) - your server must allow file uploads. Not only must it allow file uploads, but it restricts the size of the file that can be uploaded (php config).
However, it looks like jquery file upload has a PHP file handler.
I will sugest you use dreamweaver its easy to use expecially to upload files to the web n you can also see the steps needed in its help content. or you may download an ftp uploader
I have a form that uses a hidden iframe to submit a file to a script that changes the file and then returns the changed file. I found that I don't actually have to save the file anywhere if I just do something along the lines of echo file_get_contents(tmp);, where tmp is the path of the file uploaded to the apache tmp directory.
The script also does: header("Content-type: application/octet-stream") so that when the iframe loads, the user is prompted for download. I would like to know, on the client side, if everything went alright with the server. It's not an XMLHttpRequest, so I can't check the headers, and the only thing returned is the file itself.
Is there some way to return some json before streaming the file? Or, is there a way to check the headers of an iframe?
Currently, I've been setting a cookie with the server and checking every half a second with javascript to see if the cookie was set. I would prefer a less hacky solution than this though.
If you stream JSON before the file, the MIME header will be invalid and the browser will not be able to download the file.
In terms of checking "if everything went alright with the server", why wouldn't you be determining this on the server, rather than going round-trip to the client and back again? Allowing it to error-out on the client smells of bad design.
How to use PHP or any other language to read an uploading-file to allow download of the uploading-file while it is uploading?
Example sites that does this are:
http://www.filesovermiles.com/
http://host03.pipebytes.com/
Use this: http://www.php.net/manual/en/apc.configuration.php#ini.apc.rfc1867
In the array the file name is included as temp_filename - so you can pass that to your other program, which can read from the file and stream it live. The array also includes a file size so that program can make sure not to try to read beyond the end of the file.
I don't think this is possible in PHP because PHP takes care of receiving the download and only hands over control when it has the complete file. When writing CGI programs or Java servlets you read the upload from the socket so you are in control while receiving the file and you can administer if it is still uploading and how much has been received so another process could read this data and start sending what is already there.
One of the site's you've given as an example is just downloading a file from an URL or from the client computer, stores it temporarily and assigns a code to that file to make it identifiable.
After uploading, any other user who has the code can then download that file again.
This is more a question how you operate a server system then writing the code.
You can download files to the local system by making use of file_get_contents and file_put_contents.
If you want to stream file-data from the server to the browser, you can make use of readfile PHP Manual.
I have an iframe that loads a remote page (not hosted on the same domain). I would like to edit the contents of the page, but of course, this is not possible, since I don't have permissions.
So, I was wondering, if I have FTP access to the site, would there be a work around to the problem? With FTP, I could copy the files of the site over to my domain, and edit them via an iframe. But I was wondering if there is an alternate method.
Actually, yes. If you had FTP access to the site you could do it in theory.
Basically, something like:
// I used jQuery to speed up writing ajax code, really it could be anything else
jQuery.get('?refresh',function(){ // this function is called when the request finishes
// force the iframe to do a complete refresh (hence the random token)
jQuery('#iframe').attr('src','http://targetsite.com/somefile.php?r='+Math.random());
});
And:
// if the variable in question was set...
if(isset($_REQUEST['refresh'])){
// the following requires "allow_url_fopen" config to be on
// otherwise, you could use any other PHP FTP library
file_put_contents('ftp://username:password#targetsite.com/somefile.php','Hello');
}
Why use iFrames? If you need to load the content of a page hosted on another server, you could grab its content with cURL or some of the PHP file wrappers, e.g. the PHP readfile function. Viola!
If you used readfile(..) you can also make edits to the file content you've loaded before you display it. If you have permission, you could also use include() to read the file via HTTP if you are certain that a valid PHP file will be returned from your request.
Is it possible in PHP to configure it to somehow not save files to disk at all? As a matter of fact, the best thing would be to get the script going before even reading the entire POST body. (Keeping my hopes high ;))
You can turn off file uploads via a configuration setting in PHP.
http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.file-uploads
PHP needs a place to temporarily store the files content for you to be able to interact with it through PHP - although, you don't have to do anything else other then access the temporary file to get the data:
$content = file_get_contents($_FILES["user_file"]["tmp_name"]);
From here on you can manipulate with the files content without having to move the uploaded file to another location before accessing it.
You can use HTTP PUT requests to directly upload a file. PHP will not handle the upload directly (e.g. set it up in $_FILES). Instead, you have to read the raw bytes from the php://input pseudo-url and from there can do whatever you want.
There's some details and examples here.