fopen

fopen

(PHP 3, PHP 4 , PHP 5)

fopen -- 파일이나 URL을 엽니다

Description

int fopen ( string filename, string mode [, int use_include_path])

만약filename이 "http://"로 시작하면 (sensitive 하지 않은 경우에), HTTP 1.0 연결이 지정된 서버를 열어줍니다.그리고 파일 포인터는 응답텍스트의 시작부분으로 돌려집니다.. A '호스트:' 헤더부분은 name-based virtual hosts를 핸들링하기 위해서 요청과 함께 보내집니다.

HTTP 리다이렉트를 건드리지 마십시오. 반드시 디렉토리뒤에 따르는 슬래쉬를 포함시켜야 합니다.

만약에 filename이 "ftp://"로 시작이 되면 (sensitive 하지 않은 경우에), 지정된 서버가 ftp연결에 의해 열려집니다. 그리로 요청된 파일에 대한 포인터가 반환됩니다. 만약에 서버의 ftp가 받을 수 있는 모드를 지원하지 않으면, 이것은 실행될 수 없습니다. ftp를 통해서 파일을 읽거나 쓸수도 있습니다.ftp (동시에 할 수는 없습니다).

만약에filename이 "php://stdin", "php://stdout", "php://stderr",중의 하나라면 일치하는 표준입출력 스트림이 열리게 됩니다 (PHP 3.0.13에 소개가 되어 있습니다; 이전 버전에서 표준입출력 스트림에 접근하려면 filename이 "/dev/stdin" 이나 "/dev/fd/0" 이어야 합니다.)

filename이 다른 것으로 시작되면 그 파일은 파일 시스템에서 열려집니다. 그리고, 파일에 대한 파일 포인터가 열려서 반환됩니다.

열수가 없다면 FALSE를 반환합니다.

mode다음의 어느것이라도 될 수가 있습니다:

• 'r' - 읽기전용으로 열립니다; 파일포인터를 파일의 맨 앞에 놓습니다.

• 'r+' - 읽기 쓰기가 가능합니다.; 파일 포인터를 파일의 맨 앞에 놓습니다.

• 'w' - 쓰기 전용으로 열립니다; 파일 포인터를 파일의 맨 앞에 놓습니다 그리고 파일의 크기를 0으로 만듭니다. 파일이 없으면 만듭니다.

• 'w+' - 읽기 쓰기가 가능합니다; 파일포인터를 파일의 맨 앞에 놓습니다. 그리고 파일의 크기를0으로 만듭니다. 파일이 없으면 만듭니다.

• 'a' - 쓰기 전용으로 열립니다; 파일 포인터를 파일의 끝에 놓습니다. 파일이 없으면 만듭니다.

• 'a+' - 읽기 쓰기가 가능합니다; 파일 포인터를 파일의 끝에 놓습니다. 파일이 없으면 만듭니다.

mode가 문자'b'를 포함할 수도 있습니다. 이것은 시스템상에서 바이너리와 텍스트 파일을 구별짓는데 쓸모가 있습니다 (다시 말하면 유닉스에서는 쓸모가 없습니다).필요가 없으면 사용하지 마세요.

세번째 매개변수를 사용할 수 있는데 include_path가운데서 파일을 찾고 싶으면 "1"로 설정하세요.

예 1. fopen() example $fp = fopen ("/home/rasmus/file.txt", "r"); $fp = fopen ("/home/rasmus/file.gif", "wb"); $fp = fopen ("http://www.php.net/", "r"); $fp = fopen ("ftp://user:password@example.com/", "w");

PHP의 서버 모듈 버전을 사용하는데 파일을 읽고 쓰는데 문제를 겪었다면 파일과 디렉토리를 서버 프로세스가 접근이 가능하게 했는지 확인해보세요

윈도우즈에서는, 파일의 경로에서 백슬래시를 사용했는지 슬래시를 사용했는지 주의하세요.

$fp = fopen ("c:\\data\\info.txt", "r");

참조 fclose(), fsockopen(), socket_set_timeout(), and popen().

 

add a note User Contributed Notes
fopen

anonymous at anonymous dot com
26-Dec-2005 11:11

Contrary to a note below the concept of what the preferred line ending is on mac os x is a little bit fuzzy.  I'm pretty sure all the bsd utils installed by default are going to use \n but that is not necessarily the norm.  Some apps will use that while others will use \r.

You should be prepared to deal with either.

Camillo
19-Dec-2005 05:58

Contrary to what this page says, the preferred line ending on Macintosh systems is \n (LF). \r was used on legacy versions of the Mac OS (pre-OS X), and I don't think PHP even runs on those.

151408626 dot unique at servux dot org
19-Dec-2005 12:05

I found a nice trick how to work around the issue (mentioned here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fopen.php#41243) that the PHP  process will block on opening a FIFO until data is sent to it:

Simply do send some data to the FIFO, using an echo command started in background (and ignoring that spedific data, when parsing whatever read from the FIFO).

A very simple example of that:
<?

// path & name of your FIFO-file
$someFIFO = "path/to/your/fifo"

// some string, that won't be found in your regular input data
$uniqueData = "some specific data";

// this statement actually does the trick providing some data waiting in the FIFO:
//  start echo to send data to the FIFO in the background!!
//  NOTE: parenthesis & second redirection (to /dev/null) are
//  important to keep PHP from waiting for echo to terminate! 
system("(echo -n '$uniqueData' >$someFIFO) >/dev/null &");

// now you can safely open the FIFO, without the PHP-process being blocked
$handle = fopen($someFIFO, 'r');

// loop reading data from the FIFO
while (TRUE) {
   $data = fread($handle, 8192);

   // eliminate the initially sent data from our read input
   //  NOTE: this is done only in a very simplyfied way in this example,
   //  that will break if that data-string might also be part of your regular input!!
   if (!(strpos($inp, $uniqueData) === FALSE))    $data = str_replace($uniqueData, '', $data);

// here comes your processing of the read data...
}

?>

info at b1g dot de
24-Oct-2005 11:54

Simple class to fetch a HTTP URL. Supports "Location:"-redirections. Useful for servers with allow_url_fopen=false. Works with SSL-secured hosts.

<?php
#usage:
$r = new HTTPRequest('http://www.php.net');
echo $r->DownloadToString();

class HTTPRequest
{
   var $_fp;        // HTTP socket
   var $_url;        // full URL
   var $_host;        // HTTP host
   var $_protocol;    // protocol (HTTP/HTTPS)
   var $_uri;        // request URI
   var $_port;        // port
  
   // scan url
   function _scan_url()
   {
       $req = $this->_url;
      
       $pos = strpos($req, '://');
       $this->_protocol = strtolower(substr($req, 0, $pos));
      
       $req = substr($req, $pos+3);
       $pos = strpos($req, '/');
       if($pos === false)
           $pos = strlen($req);
       $host = substr($req, 0, $pos);
      
       if(strpos($host, ':') !== false)
       {
           list($this->_host, $this->_port) = explode(':', $host);
       }
       else
       {
           $this->_host = $host;
           $this->_port = ($this->_protocol == 'https') ? 443 : 80;
       }
      
       $this->_uri = substr($req, $pos);
       if($this->_uri == '')
           $this->_uri = '/';
   }
  
   // constructor
   function HTTPRequest($url)
   {
       $this->_url = $url;
       $this->_scan_url();
   }
  
   // download URL to string
   function DownloadToString()
   {
       $crlf = "\r\n";
      
       // generate request
       $req = 'GET ' . $this->_uri . ' HTTP/1.0' . $crlf
           .    'Host: ' . $this->_host . $crlf
           .    $crlf;
      
       // fetch
       $this->_fp = fsockopen(($this->_protocol == 'https' ? 'ssl://' : '') . $this->_host, $this->_port);
       fwrite($this->_fp, $req);
       while(is_resource($this->_fp) && $this->_fp && !feof($this->_fp))
           $response .= fread($this->_fp, 1024);
       fclose($this->_fp);
      
       // split header and body
       $pos = strpos($response, $crlf . $crlf);
       if($pos === false)
           return($response);
       $header = substr($response, 0, $pos);
       $body = substr($response, $pos + 2 * strlen($crlf));
      
       // parse headers
       $headers = array();
       $lines = explode($crlf, $header);
       foreach($lines as $line)
           if(($pos = strpos($line, ':')) !== false)
               $headers[strtolower(trim(substr($line, 0, $pos)))] = trim(substr($line, $pos+1));
      
       // redirection?
       if(isset($headers['location']))
       {
           $http = new HTTPRequest($headers['location']);
           return($http->DownloadToString($http));
       }
       else
       {
           return($body);
       }
   }
}
?>

admin at sellchain dot com
17-Oct-2005 02:34

TIP: If you are using fopen and fread to read HTTP or FTP or Remote Files, and experiencing some performance issues such as stalling, slowing down and otherwise, then it's time you learned a thing called cURL.

Performance Comparison:

10 per minute for fopen/fread for 100 HTTP files
2000 per minute for cURL for 2000 HTTP files

cURL should be used for opening HTTP and FTP files, it is EXTREMELY reliable, even when it comes to performance.

I noticed when using too many scripts at the same time to download the data from the site I was harvesting from, fopen and fread would go into deadlock. When using cURL i can open 50 windows, running 10 URL's from each window, and getting the best performance possible.

Just a Tip :)

nefertari at nefertari dot be
20-Sep-2005 12:47

Important note:

You have always to use the real path name for a file with the command fopen [for example: fopen($filename, 'w')], never use a symbolic link, it will not work (unable to open $filename).

francis dot fish at gmail dot com
10-Sep-2005 03:10

None of the examples on the page test to see if the file has been opened successfully. Fopen will return false if it failed. To quickly extend one of the examples in the manual:

  $filename = "some.dat" ;
  $dataFile = fopen( $filename, "r" ) ;

  if ( $dataFile )
  {
   while (!feof($dataFile))
   {
       $buffer = fgets($dataFile, 4096);
       echo $buffer;
   }

   fclose($dataFile);
  }
  else
  {
   die( "fopen failed for $filename" ) ;
  }

Hope this is some use.

durwood at speakeasy dot NOSPAM dot net
07-Sep-2005 06:43

I couldn't for the life of me get a certain php script working when i moved my server to a new Fedora 4 installation. The problem was that fopen() was failing when trying to access a file as a URL through apache -- even though it worked fine when run from the shell and even though the file was readily readable from any browser.  After trying to place blame on Apache, RedHat, and even my cat and dog, I finally ran across this bug report on Redhat's website:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=164700

Basically the problem was SELinux (which I knew nothing about) -- you have to run the following command in order for SELinux to allow php to open a web file:

/usr/sbin/setsebool httpd_can_network_connect=1

To make the change permanent, run it with the -P option:

/usr/sbin/setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect=1

Hope this helps others out -- it sure took me a long time to track down the problem.

ericw at w3consultant dot net
02-Sep-2005 06:49

RE: using fopen to read an http doc
I beat my head against the wall trying to figure out why i couldn't fopen("http://www.mainserver.com/mySettings.php","r");
on just 1 webserver. It was working on all the other webservers, but on this one, it would just hang, then fail.

Finally i figured out the machine i was doing it on was unable to look up domain names!
If you are having this problem try an nslookup to the website you are having from the command line.
ie: nslookup www.yahoo.com

If that fails, the fopen will not work either.
I changed to an IP (temp solution) and it works like a charm.
-e

Luiz Miguel Axcar (lmaxcar at yahoo dot com dot br)
17-Aug-2005 08:11

If you are getting message "Warning: fopen(): URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration", you can use function below to get the content from a local or remote file.

Function uses CURL lib, follow the link to get help: http://www.php.net/curl

<?php
/*
   * @return string
   * @param string $url
   * @desc Return string content from a remote file
   * @author Luiz Miguel Axcar (lmaxcar@yahoo.com.br)
*/

function get_content($url)
{
   $ch = curl_init();

   curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
   curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

   ob_start();

   curl_exec ($ch);
   curl_close ($ch);
   $string = ob_get_contents();

   ob_end_clean();
  
   return $string;   
}

#usage:
$content = get_content ("http://www.php.net");
var_dump ($content);
?>

zachajc at yahoo dot com (Zealot)
05-Aug-2005 08:35

When designing a few flatfile databases and admin panels, I stumbled upon an interesting thing. If a file has been generated into a page or variable via the readfile or include methods (did not try require), an ereg or preg replace to replace \n with <br> does not detect any \n in the file. However, when attempting the same thing with fopen, fread, it works perfectly.

ideacode
03-Aug-2005 02:28

Note that whether you may open directories is operating system dependent. The following lines:

<?php
// Windows ($fh === false)
$fh = fopen('c:\\Temp', 'r');

// UNIX (is_resource($fh) === true)
$fh = fopen('/tmp', 'r');
?>

demonstrate that on Windows (2000, probably XP) you may not open a directory (the error is "Permission Denied"), regardless of the security permissions on that directory.

On UNIX, you may happily read the directory format for the native filesystem.

rafaelbc at matrix dot com dot br
23-May-2005 04:23

pflaume dot NOSPAM at NOSPAM dot gmx dot de's proxy_url() was very helpful to me!
Although, I still had a problem: proxy authentication.

So I added some code to enable http get through a proxy with user authentication.

<?php
function proxy_url($proxy_url)
{
   $proxy_name = '127.0.0.1';
   $proxy_port = 4001;
   $proxy_user = "user";    // added
   $proxy_pass = "password";    // added
   $proxy_cont = '';

   $proxy_fp = fsockopen($proxy_name, $proxy_port);
   if (!$proxy_fp)    {return false;}
   fputs($proxy_fp, "GET $proxy_url HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: $proxy_name\r\n");
   fputs($proxy_fp, "Proxy-Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode ("$proxy_user:$proxy_pass") . "\r\n\r\n");    // added
   while(!feof($proxy_fp)) {$proxy_cont .= fread($proxy_fp,4096);}
   fclose($proxy_fp);
   $proxy_cont = substr($proxy_cont, strpos($proxy_cont,"\r\n\r\n")+4);
   return $proxy_cont;
}
?>

francois AT crevola DOT com
11-May-2005 11:54

In reply to "pflaume dot NOSPAM at NOSPAM dot gmx dot de"
about  fopen() and PROXY

With PHP 5.0.0 and after, you can use a proxy by using a stream context. See the note about "Context support was added with PHP 5.0.0".

18-Apr-2005 03:41

This only relavant to those opening a remote file for writing using the PECL SSH2 for SFTP paths for the string filename.  Since SFTP has variations, most of which are non-secure, using this module is the only viable solution.  The optional FTP extension class that uses the function 'ftp_ssl_connect' uses openssl, which only encrypts the communication requests and not the data - or something close to that.  At any rate, many systems will not allow connection to their SFTP server using this method.

I think it's worth mentioning that some of the examples provided in various areas failed consistantly using the syntax given, using both possible methods of.
   ssh2.sftp://$sftp/example.com/path/to/file
   ssh2.sftp://user:pass@$sftp/example.com/path/to/file

It's just a small adjustment to correct this, but as most coding goes, a long road to find a stupid little oversight.  Apparently it is necessary to supply the port as well in the path.  Could just be the few systems I was testing against, but that would be three separate networks using three separate platforms (Windows Server, Linux, Unix).  At any rate, the following works like a charm, and was very simple to install the libssh2 library and PECL SSH2 module required to use this system.  Gotta love PHP.
   ssh2.sftp://$sftp/example.com:22/path/to/file
   ssh2.sftp://user:pass@$sftp:22/example.com/path/to/file

Hope this saves anyone some headache and time.

abesharp at yahoo dot co dot uk
05-Apr-2005 11:12

This function has a basic implementation of HTTP Digest Authentication (as per RFC 2617) to get a file from a web server which requires digest authentication (as opposed to basic authentication - the difference being that, with basic, your password is sent to the server as plain text, whereas with digest, it is hashed with a server-supplied nonce to protect against sniffing and replay attacks).

You just supply the host (e.g www.example.com), the name of the file you want (e.g protected_page.html), and the necessary username and password, and the function returns the contents of the protected file (or the error message that the server sends, if you supplied the wrong credentials).

If the server only supports a QOP of auth-int (rather then auth) this function won't work, but can be easily modified with reference to the RFC at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2617.txt

<?php
function readHTTPDigestAuthenticatedFile($host,$file,$username,$password)
{
   if (!$fp=fsockopen($host,80, $errno, $errstr, 15))
       return false;
      
   //first do the non-authenticated header so that the server
   //sends back a 401 error containing its nonce and opaque
   $out = "GET /$file HTTP/1.1\r\n";
       $out .= "Host: $host\r\n";
       $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";

     fwrite($fp, $out);

   //read the reply and look for the WWW-Authenticate element
   while (!feof($fp))
   {
       $line=fgets($fp, 512);
      
       if (strpos($line,"WWW-Authenticate:")!==false)
           $authline=trim(substr($line,18));
   }
  
   fclose($fp);
      
   //split up the WWW-Authenticate string to find digest-realm,nonce and opaque values
   //if qop value is presented as a comma-seperated list (e.g auth,auth-int) then it won't be retrieved correctly
   //but that doesn't matter because going to use 'auth' anyway
   $authlinearr=explode(",",$authline);
   $autharr=array();
  
   foreach ($authlinearr as $el)
   {
       $elarr=explode("=",$el);
       //the substr here is used to remove the double quotes from the values
       $autharr[trim($elarr[0])]=substr($elarr[1],1,strlen($elarr[1])-2);
   }
  
   foreach ($autharr as $k=>$v)
       echo("$k ==> $v\r\n");
  
   //these are all the vals required from the server
   $nonce=$autharr['nonce'];
   $opaque=$autharr['opaque'];
   $drealm=$autharr['Digest realm'];
  
   //client nonce can be anything since this authentication session is not going to be persistent
   //likewise for the cookie - just call it MyCookie
   $cnonce="sausages";
  
   //calculate the hashes of A1 and A2 as described in RFC 2617
   $a1="$username:$drealm:$password";$a2="GET:/$file";
   $ha1=md5($a1);$ha2=md5($a2);
  
   //calculate the response hash as described in RFC 2617
   $concat = $ha1.':'.$nonce.':00000001:'.$cnonce.':auth:'.$ha2;
   $response=md5($concat);
  
   //put together the Authorization Request Header
   $out = "GET /$file HTTP/1.1\r\n";
       $out .= "Host: $host\r\n";
   $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n";
   $out .= "Cookie: cookie=MyCookie\r\n";
   $out .= "Authorization: Digest username=\"$username\", realm=\"$drealm\", qop=\"auth\", algorithm=\"MD5\", uri=\"/$file\", nonce=\"$nonce\", nc=00000001, cnonce=\"$cnonce\", opaque=\"$opaque\", response=\"$response\"\r\n\r\n";
  
   if (!$fp=fsockopen($host,80, $errno, $errstr, 15))
       return false;
  
   fwrite($fp, $out);
  
   //read in a string which is the contents of the required file
   while (!feof($fp))
   {
       $str.=fgets($fp, 512);
   }
  
   fclose($fp);
  
   return $str;
}

?>

nuno at ideianet dot pt
04-Mar-2005 01:03

In IIS you must add the group Authenticated Users
with write and modify permissions in the file where
you want to write if you are in a Protected directory
(Basic or Digest authentication) and want to write to
a file in a Unprotected directory (Anonymous Access)
in order to get permission to do that. Otherwise you
will get the message: PHP Warning: fopen(x.txt): failed
to open stream: Permission denied in c:\web\x\x.php on
line 3 PHP Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not
a valid stream resource in c:\web\x\x.php on line 10

nuno at ideianet dot pt
21-Feb-2005 05:37

In IIS you must add the user IUSR_yourservername
(Internet Guest Account) with write and modify
permissions in the file where you want to write
in order to get permission to do that. Otherwise
you will get the message: PHP Warning: fopen(x.txt):
failed to open stream: Permission denied in
c:\web\x\x.php on line 3 PHP Warning: fwrite():
supplied argument is not a valid stream resource
in c:\web\x\x.php on line 10

Thomas Candrian tc_ at gmx dot ch
12-Nov-2004 03:35

With this it isn't possible to get data from another port than 80 (and 443) - at least for me. Because of that I've made this function who gets data from every port you want using HTTP:

<?php;
function getcontent($server, $port, $file)
{
   $cont = "";
   $ip = gethostbyname($server);
   $fp = fsockopen($ip, $port);
   if (!$fp)
   {
       return "Unknown";
   }
   else
   {
       $com = "GET $file HTTP/1.1\r\nAccept: */*\r\nAccept-Language: de-ch\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\r\nUser-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)\r\nHost: $server:$port\r\nConnection: Keep-Alive\r\n\r\n";
       fputs($fp, $com);
       while (!feof($fp))
       {
           $cont .= fread($fp, 500);
       }
       fclose($fp);
       $cont = substr($cont, strpos($cont, "\r\n\r\n") + 4);
       return $cont;
   }
}
echo getcontent("www.myhost.com", "81", "/"));
?>

Works fine for me. Had to do this especially for a shoutcast server, which only delivered the HTML-file if the user-agent was given.

pflaume dot NOSPAM at NOSPAM dot gmx dot de
07-Nov-2004 10:31

fopen() and PROXY

I wondered why there is no possibility to use fopen() through a proxy in php. The solution posted above did not work for me.

This little function gets http through a given proxy:

<?php
function proxy_url($proxy_url)
{
   $proxy_name = '127.0.0.1';
   $proxy_port = 4001;
   $proxy_cont = '';

   $proxy_fp = fsockopen($proxy_name, $proxy_port);
   if (!$proxy_fp)    {return false;}
   fputs($proxy_fp, "GET $proxy_url HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: $proxy_name\r\n\r\n");
   while(!feof($proxy_fp)) {$proxy_cont .= fread($proxy_fp,4096);}
   fclose($proxy_fp);
   $proxy_cont = substr($proxy_cont, strpos($proxy_cont,"\r\n\r\n")+4);
   return $proxy_cont;
}
?>

justin at redwiredesign dot com
14-Jul-2004 07:03

One thing worth noting is that if you use the fopen command to open an HTTP stream, and the URL you're trying to access is invalid or generates an error response, (i.e. 404 Not found), the fopen call will return false.

Jem Tallon
13-Apr-2004 10:11

If you're using fopen to open a URL that requires authorization, you might need to force a HTTP/1.0 request for it since fopen won't support HTTP/1.1 requests. You can do that by setting your user_agent to one that is known only to support HTTP/1.0 (most webservers will be configured to force HTTP/1.0 for some browsers). Here's what worked for me:

<?php
$returned=URLopen("http://$username:$password@example.com");

function URLopen($url)
{
       // Fake the browser type
       ini_set('user_agent','MSIE 4\.0b2;');

       $dh = fopen("$url",'r');
       $result = fread($dh,8192);                                                                                                                           
       return $result;
}
?>

php at gotdoof dot com
04-Apr-2004 04:19

Note that opening a fifo with fopen() will block the php process until data is sent to it. That means any function you have registered as a shutdown function (register_shutdown_function()) will not be called when the user disconnects, and the process will keep running in the background, waiting for input. I know of no way around this, besides using some other means of IPC.

richard dot quadling at carval dot co dot uk
04-Feb-2004 01:04

The issue involving some sites requiring a valid user-agent string when using fopen can easily be resolved by setting the user_agent string in the PHP.INI file.

If you do not have access to the PHP.INI file, then the use of

ini_set('user_agent','Mozilla: (compatible; Windows XP)');

should also work.

The actual agent string is up to you. If you want to identify to the sites that you are using PHP ...

ini_set('user_agent','PHP');

would do.

Regards,

Richard Quadling.

29-Jan-2004 07:34

If you are connecting to your ftp server through a router doing NAT (such as the Zyxel 128L prestige router/bridge we are using) by doing say an <? fopen("ftp://ftpusername:ftppassword@ftpserver/".$file_name, "w") ?>, then this could fail. You will get php_hostconnect connection failed error. This is because <?fopen() ?>function uses a passive ftp connection which the Zyxel router does not support, even though your ftp server may be configured to allow the passive connections which php <?fopen?> function is using. Note that $file_name is the file we want to ftp to the remote server eg could be file.txt.

Thus an alternative would be to do create the file you want in a local directory of your machine or in the webserver where your php files reside eg use <?fwrite()?> as documented in the manual. Once you have the $file_name you want to ftp created, do the following:

<?
ftp_connect($ftp_server);
//which can connect to the ftp server using an active connection.
ftp_login ($conn_id, $ftp_username."@".$ftp_server, $ftp_password);
$fp = fopen($PATH."".$file_name, 'r');
// eg. $fp = fopen("http://www.yourwebsite.com/".$file_name, 'r');
//turn off passive mode transfers
ftp_pasv ($conn_id, false);
//now upload $file_name
ftp_fput($conn_id, $file_name, $fp, FTP_ASCII));
?>
Your file should now be in your ftp server, having used an active connection.

sergiopaternoster at tiscali dot it
27-Nov-2003 01:11

If you want to open large files (more than 2GB) that's what I did and it works: you should recompile your php with the CFLAGS="-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64" ./configure etc... This tells to your compiler (I tested only gcc on PHP-4.3.4 binary on Linux and Solaris) to make the PHP parser binary large file aware. This way fopen() will not give you the "Value too large for defined data type" error message.
God bless PHP
ciao
Sergio Paternoster

ken dot gregg at rwre dot com
25-Nov-2003 11:03

PHP will open a directory if a path with no file name is supplied. This just bit me. I was not checking the filename part of a concatenated string.

For example:

$fd = fopen('/home/mydir/' . $somefile, 'r');

Will open the directory if $somefile = ''

If you attempt to read using the file handle you will get the binary directory contents. I tried append mode and it errors out so does not seem to be dangerous.

This is with FreeBSD 4.5 and PHP 4.3.1. Behaves the same on 4.1.1 and PHP 4.1.2. I have not tested other version/os combinations.

dan at cleandns dot com
19-Nov-2003 07:15

<?php
#going to update last users counter script since
#aborting a write because a file is locked is not correct.

$counter_file = '/tmp/counter.txt';
clearstatcache();
ignore_user_abort(true);    ## prevent refresh from aborting file operations and hosing file
if (file_exists($counter_file)) {
   $fh = fopen($counter_file, 'r+');
   while(1) {
     if (flock($fh, LOCK_EX)) {
         #$buffer = chop(fgets($fh, 2));
         $buffer = chop(fread($fh, filesize($counter_file)));
         $buffer++;
         rewind($fh);
         fwrite($fh, $buffer);
         fflush($fh);
         ftruncate($fh, ftell($fh));   
         flock($fh, LOCK_UN);
         break;
     }
   }
}
else {
   $fh = fopen($counter_file, 'w+');
   fwrite($fh, "1");
   $buffer="1";
}
fclose($fh);

print "Count is $buffer";

?>

phpNO at SPAMperfectweb dot com
31-Jul-2003 08:39

I offer the following script for updating a counter, using methods gleaned from various posts on file operations...

<?
$counter_file = 'somefile.txt';
clearstatcache();
ignore_user_abort(true);    ## prevent refresh from aborting file operations and hosing file
$fh = fopen($counter_file, 'r+b');    ## use 'r+b' so file can be read and written
if ($fh)
{
     if (flock($fh, LOCK_EX))    ## don't do anything unless lock is successful
     {
         $count = fread($fh, filesize($counter_file));
         rewind($fh);
         $count++;
         fwrite($fh, $count);
         fflush($fh);
         ftruncate($fh, ftell($fh));    ## better than truncating to 0 before writing, per 04-Mar-2003 comment below
         flock($fh, LOCK_UN);
     } else echo "Could not lock counter file '$counter_file'";
     fclose($fh);
} else  echo "Could not open counter file '$counter_file'";
ignore_user_abort(false);    ## put things back to normal

echo "counter is at $count";
?>

unshift at yahoo dot com
01-Jul-2003 11:58

It seems that fopen() errors when you attempt opening a url starting with HTTP:// as opposed to http:// - it is case sensitive.  In 4.3.1 anyway..."HTTP://", by not matching "http://" will tell the wrapper to look locally.  From the looks of the source, the same goes for HTTPS vs https, etc.

simon at gornall dot net
19-Jun-2003 07:24

If you're having problems with fopen("url...") but you can run 'host url' in a shell window and get the correct lookup, here's why...

This has had me banging my head against it all day - finally I found the answer buried in the bug reports, but figured it should really be more prominent!

The problem happens when you're on an ADSL line with DHCP (like our office)... When the ADSL modem renews the DHCP lease, you can also switch DNS servers, which confuses apache (and hence PHP) - meaning that you can't look up hosts from within PHP, even though you *can* from the commandline.... The short-term solution is to restart apache.

You'll get "php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in ..." messages as symptoms. Restart apache, and they're gone :-)

Simon

RobNar
17-Jun-2003 03:15

This is an addendum to ibetyouare at home dot com's note about Apache directory permissions.  If you are on a shared host and cannot tweak Apache's permissions directives then you might try setting the same thing in a .htaccess file.  Failing that, if you are having trouble just creating files then  set the directory permissions to allow writing (for whatever directory the file is supposed to be in) and include the following before fopen():

`touch /path/to/myfile/myfile.txt`;

That will usually create a new empty file that you can write to even when fopen fails. - PHP 4.3.0

09-Jun-2003 10:50

If you have problems with safe mode creating errors

"Warning: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is.."

because one of your PHP scripts created the PHP file you are now trying to run, then you can use fopen() to create these files which will then be owned by you (not the server admin).

It must be done using the ftp method...

>> fopen('ftp://user:pass@domain.com', 'w+b');

But please remember that this only creates files, I haven?t found a way around setting the correct UID on folders (yet)

Krang
- http://www.krang.org.uk

Jhilton a at t nurv dot us
05-Jun-2003 07:54

Quick tip. If using fopen to make http requests that contain a querystring, it is advised that you urlencode() your values, else characters like @ can make fopen (or whatever wrapper it is using) throw an error.

04-Mar-2003 04:49

To overwrite a file with a new content without deleting it, and without changing the owner or access rights, it's best to not use:

$file = fopen($filename, 'r+b); // binary update mode
...
ftruncate($file, 0);
fwrite($file, $my_stuff);
...
fclose($file);

but instead the faster one:

$file = fopen($filename, 'r+b); // binary update mode
...
rewind($file);
fwrite($file, $my_stuff);
fflush($file);
ftruncate($file, ftell($file));
...
fclose($file);

The reason is that truncating a file at size 0 forces the OS to deallocate all storage clusters used by the file, before you write your content which will be reallocated on disk.

The second code simply overwrites the existing content where it is already located on disk, and truncates any remaining bytes that may exist (if the new content is shorter than the old content). The "r+b" mode allows access for both read and write: the file can be kept opened after reading it and before rewriting the modified content.

It's particularly useful for files that are accessed often or have a size larger than a few kilobytes, as it saves lots of system I/O, and also limits the filesystem fragmentation if the updated file is quite large.

And this method also works if the file is locked exclusively once opened (but I would rather recommend using another empty file for locking purpose, opened with "a+" access mode, in "/var/lock/yourapp/*" or other fast filesystems where filelocks are easily monitored and where the webserver running PHP is allowed to create and update lock files, and not forgetting to close the lock file after closing the content file).

draconumpb at hotmail dot com
06-Dec-2002 11:37

I just used explode() as an alternative to fscanf, since my only delimiter was | (pipe). I was having problems with it, since I use it in my news-management script. I found that it cut the last variable I was using, $body, a bit short when I posted a long news post. This would've been a real problem for anybody trying to make news posts longer than a paragraph or so.

However, I found that when I used:
list($variable1, $variable2, etc) = explode("|",$data);
it didn't cut any variables short, so.. what I'm really trying to say here is that for people who are experiencing problems with parsing simple files (i.e with only a single, simple delimiter such as : or |) using the unecessarily complex fscanf() and sscanf() functions, explode() is definately the way to go.

function get_news($filepath, $newsid)
{
$datafile = fopen("$filepath/news/$newsid.txt","r");
$data = fread($datafile, 1000000);
list($author, $email, $date, $subject, $body) = explode("|",$data);
$body = stripslashes("$body");
$subject = stripslashes("$subject");
echo "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$author</a> -- $date -- $subject<hr>$body<p>";
}

sample file:

AdministratorMax|admin@somesite.com|Tuesday, March 5th @ 5:45 PM EST|Site Going Down Tomarrow|Well, folks, I\'m sorry to say that the site will indeed be down tomarrow for most of the day. Hang in there.

Output:

<a href="mailto:admin@somesite.com">AdministratorMax</a> -- Tuesday, March 5th -- Site Going Down Tomarrow<hr>Well, folks, I'm sorry to say that the site will indeed be down tomarrow for most of the day. Hang in there.

Thought that might be useful for anybody making a simple news-management script, ;)

By the way, feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes - I'm at my dad's work where I don't really have a way to check to see if it works or not. However, I use a more complex version of this on my portal project, and it works beautifully.

andyNO at SPAMuchicago dot edu
30-Aug-2002 09:42

Playing with fopen("https://xxx", "r") it seems that HTTPS is only supported with OpenSSL AND PHP 4.3 . Older versions of PHP don't seem to be able to do this.

suraj at _nospam_nospam_symonds dot net
17-Jul-2002 01:41

This note is relevant to the first few notes that talk about writing to files as user 'foobar'.

if one wanted to write to files as user 'foobar' when apache runs as 'root' the new POSIX fucntions. Here's a code snippet explaining how this can be done

<?

$x = posix_getuid ();

if (0 == $x) {
   echo "I'm root\n";

   $pw_info = posix_getpwnam ("foobar");
   $uid = $pw_info["uid"];
   posix_setuid ($uid);

   $fp = fopen ("/tmp/test.file", "w");
   fclose ($fp);
} else {
   echo "I'm not root! I'm not worthy... I'm not worthy....\n";
}

?>

[Note:
1. This would only set the uid... not the gid. If you wanted to write to files as 'foobar:foobar' then you also have to do a posix_setgid ($gid);
2. If you are using the CGI version of php4, you should setuid your php4 interpreter: chmod 4755 /path/to/cgi-bin/php4 (generally, /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php4)]

01-Jul-2002 04:57

Note that if specifying the optional 'b' (binary) mode, it appears that it cannot be the first letter for some unaccountable reason. In other words, "br" doesn't work, while "rb" is ok!

jared at dctkc dot com
22-Apr-2002 08:33

<?php
// HOW TO USE PHP TO WRITE TO YOUR SERIAL PORT: TWO METHODS
$serproxy=true;
if ($serproxy) {
   // Use this code in conjunction with SERPROXY.EXE
   // (http://www.lspace.nildram.co.uk/freeware.html)
   // which converts a Serial stream to a TCP/IP stream
   $fp = fsockopen ("localhost", 5331, $errno, $errstr, 30);
   if (!$fp) {
       echo "$errstr ($errno)";
   } else {
       $e = chr(27);
       $string  = $e . "A" . $e . "H300";
       $string .= $e . "V100" . $e . "XL1SATO";
       $string .= $e . "Q1" . $e . "Z";
       echo $string;
       fputs ($fp, $string );
       fclose ($fp);
   }
} elseif ($com1) {
   // Use this code to write directly to the COM1 serial port
   // First, you want to set the mode of the port. You need to set
   // it only once; it will remain the same until you reboot.
   // Note: the backticks on the following line will execute the
   // DOS 'mode' command from within PHP
   `mode com1: BAUD=9600 PARITY=N data=8 stop=1 xon=off`;
   $fp = fopen ("COM1:", "w+");
   if (!$fp) {
       echo "Uh-oh. Port not opened.";
   } else {
       $e = chr(27);
       $string  = $e . "A" . $e . "H300";
       $string .= $e . "V100" . $e . "XL1SATO";
       $string .= $e . "Q1" . $e . "Z";
       echo $string;
       fputs ($fp, $string );
       fclose ($fp);
   }
}
?>

16-Mar-2002 02:18

Also if you're server is useing htaccess to authticate users make sure to add the username and password to the http link you're trying to open. I forgot about this and took a while to find.
ie:

fopen("http://user:pass@www.mysite.com/mypage.php");

landrews at email dot com
21-Feb-2002 06:31

To the people haveing problems with opening "ftp:" url opens and files not being written.  It seems that PHP wants the complete path. Make sure your not referencing through a soft link or alias. Use the full path from /
ie
/usr/www/htdocs/data/blah.php

php at themastermind1 dot com
24-Oct-2001 05:37

I have found that I can do fopen("COM1:", "r+"); to open the comport in windows. You have to make sure the comport isn't already open or you will get a permission denied.

I am still playing around with this but you have to somehow flush what you send to the comport if you are trying to communicate realtime with a device.

keithm at aoeex dot NOSPAM dot com
31-Jul-2001 12:19

I was working on a consol script for win32 and noticed a few things about it.  On win32 it appears that you can't re-open the input stream for reading, but rather you have to open it once, and read from there on.  Also, i don't know if this is a bug or what but it appears that fgets() reads until the new line anyway.  The number of characters returned is ok, but it will not halt reading and return to the script.  I don't know of a work around for this right now, but i'll keep working on it.

This is some code to work around the close and re-open of stdin.

<?php
function read($length='255'){
   if (!isset($GLOBALS['StdinPointer'])){
       $GLOBALS['StdinPointer']=fopen("php://stdin","r");
   }
   $line=fgets($GLOBALS['StdinPointer'],$length);
   return trim($line);
}
echo "Enter your name: ";
$name=read();
echo "Enter your age: ";
$age=read();
echo "Hi $name, Isn't it Great to be $age years old?";
@fclose($StdinPointer);
?>

icon at mricon dot com
09-Nov-1999 10:44

If you're running PHP as apache module, it will always write files as "nobody", "www", "httpd", (or whatever user your webserver runs as) unless you specify a different user/group in httpd.conf, or compile apache with suexec support.
However, if you run PHP as a CGI wrapper, you may setuid the PHP executable to whatever user you wish (*severe* security issues apply). If you really want to be able to su to other user, I recommend compiling with suexec support.
AFAIK, PHP can't NOT use SuEXEC if apache does. If PHP is configured as an apache module it will act as whatever user the apache is. If apache SuEXEC's to otheruser:othergroup (e.g. root:root), that's what PHP will write files as, because it acts as a part of apache code. I suggest you double-check your SuEXEC configuration and settings. Note: you can't su to another user within the PHP code -- it has to be an apache directive, either through <VirtualHost>, or through .htaccess. Also note: I'm not sure how it all works (if it works at all) on Win32 platforms.
Check www.apache.org to see how it's done.