I want to create a file on the webserver dynamically in PHP.
First I create a directory to store the file. THIS WORKS
// create the users directory and index page
$dirToCreate = "..".$_SESSION['s_USER_URL'];
mkdir($dirToCreate, 0777, TRUE); // create the directory for the user
Now I want to create a file called index.php and write out some content into it.
I am trying:
$ourFileName = $_SESSION['s_USER_URL']."/"."index.php";
$ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'x') or die("can't open file");
fclose($ourFileHandle);
// append data to it
$ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'a') or die("can't write to file");
$stringData = "Hi";
fwrite($ourFileHandle, $stringData);
But it never gets past the $ourFileHandle = fopen($ourFileName, 'x') or die("can't open file"); Saying the file does not exist, but that is the point. I want to create it.
I did some echoing and the path (/people/jason) exists and I am trying to write to /people/jason/index.php
Does anyone have any thoughts on what I am doing wrong?
PHP 5 on a linux server I believe.
-Jason
First you do :
$dirToCreate = "..".$_SESSION['s_USER_URL'];
But the filename you try to write to is not prefixed with the '..', so try changing
$ourFileName = $_SESSION['s_USER_URL']."/"."index.php";
to
$ourFileName = '..' . $_SESSION['s_USER_URL'] . '/index.php';
or probably tidier:
$ourFileName = $dirToCreate . '/index.php';
You are probably getting the warning because the directory you are trying to write the file into does not exist
It could be a result of one of your php ini settings, or possibly an apache security setting.
Try creating the dir as only rwxr-x--- and see how that goes.
I recall a shared hosting setup where "safemode" was compiled in and this behaviour tended to occur, basically, if the files/dirs were writable by too many people they would magically stop being acessible.
Its probably doc'd in php, but ill have to check.
why not use:
file_put_contents( $filename, $content )
or you could touch the file before writing to it.
Does the file 'index.php' already exist? When you fopen with the 'x' mode, if the file exists fopen will return FALSE and trigger a warning.
What i first noticed is you are making a directory higher in the tree, then attempting to make the php file in the current folder. Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't you trying to make the file in the new created folder? if i recall php correctly (pardon me it's been a while, i'll probably add something from another language in here not noticing) here is an easier to understand way for a beginner, of course change the values accordingly, this simply makes a directory and makes a file then sets permissions.
<?php
$path = "..".$_SESSION['s_USER_URL'];
// may want to add a tilde (~) to user directory
// path, unixy thing to do ;D
mkdir($path, 0777); // make directory, set perms.
$file = "index.php"; // declare a file name
/* here you could use the chdir() command, if you wanted to go to the
directory where you created the file, this will help you understand the
rest of your code as you will have to perform less concatenation on
directories such as below */
$handle = fopen($path."/".$file, 'w') or die("can't open file");
// open file for writing, create if it doesn't exist
$info = "Stack Overflow was here!"; // string to input
fwrite($handle, $info); // perform the write operation
fclose($handle); // close the handle
?>
Related
I have code I'm using to create a file using the name of one field, then opening that file and writing the contents from another. That works fine.
However when users attempt to pull up this file and change information and save it it doesn't overwrite the information.
If a user deletes the file (which works) then recreates it using the same name, but attempts to input new data, it creates the new file (with the same name as the old file) however it retains the old information and doesn't update. I can't find out what's causing that.
I was originally using file_put_contents and I've attempted to use different parameters for the fopen() but it doesn't seem to work. They can create and save just fine, however the main issues are they can't edit as it doesn't overwrite data and they can't delete the file (even as a workaround) and recreate it using the same name.
edited to add: Also when they try and save information, instead of opening the file and overwriting it, it creates a second and NEW file filename.html.html
// Put together the full path of the file we want to create
$FILENAME = $USER_DIRECTORY.'/'.$_POST['CodeDescription'].'.html';
$CODE = $_POST['Code'];
if( !is_file( $FILENAME ) ):
// Open the text file, write the contents, and close it.
$fp = fopen($FILENAME, "w+") or die("Couldn't open $FILENAME for
writing!");
fwrite($fp, $CODE) or die("Couldn't write values to file!");
endif;
header('Location: mywebsite.comsaved=1&file='.$FILENAME);
}
?>
A quick hack might be to try this:
// Put together the full path of the file we want to create
$FILENAME = $USER_DIRECTORY.'/'.$_POST['CodeDescription'].'.html';
$CODE = $_POST['Code'];
//Delete file if exists.
if(is_file( $FILENAME)) {
unlink($FILENAME);
}
// Open the text file, write the contents, and close it.
$fp = fopen($FILENAME, "w+") or die("Couldn't open $FILENAME for
writing!");
fwrite($fp, $CODE) or die("Couldn't write values to file!");
header('Location: mywebsite.comsaved=1&file='.$FILENAME);
}
<?
$file = ("file*");
$fp = fopen($file, 'a') or die("can't open file");
fwrite($fp, "testing");
fclose($fp);
?>
I want "testing" to be written to a file called file2.txt, but it instead writes to file*. I know that i can just set $file to "file2.txt", but this is just hypothetical.
I don't believe that globbing works the way you have it listed here. You could use the glob() function, which returns an array of matched filenames:
array = glob("file*")
I wouldn't recommend doing this, of course, because it's often hard to know that you'll only have a single file called file2.txt in the directory. If you do know that, it's better to specify explicitly, rather than using globbing.
That said, if you wanted to do things this way, that's how I would do it.
I know you can create a temporary file with tmpfile and than write to it, and close it when it is not needed anymore. But the problem I have is that I need the absolute path to the file like this:
"/var/www/html/lolo/myfile.xml"
Can I somehow get the path, even with some other function or trick?
EDIT:
I want to be able to download the file from the database, but without
$fh = fopen("/var/www/html/myfile.xml", 'w') or die("no no");
fwrite($fh, $fileData);
fclose($fh);
because if I do it like this, there is a chance of overlapping, if more people try to download the same file at exactly the same time. Or am I wrong?
EDIT2:
Maybe I can just generate unique(uniqID) filenames like that, and than delete them. Or can this be too consuming for the server if many people are downloading?
There are many ways you can achieve this, here is one
<?php
// Create a temp file in the temporary
// files directory using sys_get_temp_dir()
$temp_file = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'MyFileName');
echo $temp_file;
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
/var/tmp/MyFileNameX322.tmp
I know you can create a temporary file with tmpfile
That is a good start, something like this will do:
$fileHandleResource = tmpfile();
Can I somehow get the path, even with some other function or trick?
Yes:
$metaData = stream_get_meta_data($fileHandleResource);
$filepath = $metaData['uri'];
This approach has the benefit of leaving it up to PHP to pick a good place and name for this temporary file, which could end up being a good thing or a bad thing depending on your needs. But it is the simplest way to do this if you don't yet have a specific reason to pick your own directory and filename.
References:
http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.stream-get-meta-data.php
Getting filename (or deleting file) using file handle
This will give you the directory. I guess after that you are on your own.
For newer (not very new lol) versions of PHP (requires php 5.2.1 or higher) #whik's answer is better suited:
<?php
// Create a temp file in the temporary
// files directory using sys_get_temp_dir()
$temp_file = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'MyFileName');
echo $temp_file;
?>
The above example will output something similar to: /var/tmp/MyFileNameX322.tmp
old answer
Just in case someone encounters exactly the same problem. I ended up doing
$fh = fopen($filepath, 'w') or die("Can't open file $name for writing temporary stuff.");
fwrite($fh, $fileData);
fclose($fh);
and
unlink($filepath);
at the end when file is not needed anymore.
Before that, I generated filename like that:
$r = rand();
$filepath = "/var/www/html/someDirectory/$name.$r.xml";
I just generated a temporary file, deleted it, and created a folder with the same name
$tempFolder = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'MyFileName');
unlink($tempFolder);
mkdir($tempFolder);
I am trying to create a file using php to a dirctory which has cmod 0777 so it should be fine.
Here is the code:
$fh = fopen("/_myfiles/myfile.txt", "w+");
if ($fh==false)
{
die("unable to create file");
}
But all I get is "unable to create file". Any ideas on what it could be?
Note: For the path I've also tried:
$fh = fopen($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/_myfiles/myfile.txt", "w+");
with no success.
fopen() generates an E_WARNING message on failure.
I recommend using error_reporting(E_ALL) to show the warning and this should help you to troubleshoot the problem from there.
Check write permissions on the directory you want to create the file in.
Also the directory "_myfiles" should exist (it won't be created automatically).
If they are correct, then this will create the file in the same directory where the PHP script is located:
$basedir = dirname(__FILE__);
$fh = fopen($basedir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'myfile.txt', 'w+');
I have a page called index.php which is calling a function "writelog" in includes/Logger.php
I have file located at includes folder and code is as below.
function writelog($logText){
$myFile = "testlog.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
$stringData = $logText + "\n";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
}
It shows errror "can't open file" . I have set FullPermission for everyone and still it says it cant access file.I tried to put file in same folder as index.php and same error. What can be possible cause ? Am I having wrong path ?
Try using the full path of the log file
$myFile = "/full/path/to/testlog.txt";
I am assuming this file is also in includes, I'm guessing this is called from another script so the path would be one of the calling script. You can use this:
$prevdir = getcwd();
chdir(dirname(__FILE__));
$myFile = "testlog.txt";
chdir($prevdir);
But it's best to use absolute paths