fopen() problem

[Schmoopy]

Hi all, just wanted to mess around with this function a bit and was trying a few examples from w3 schools, but for some reason it doesn't seem to work for me.

I have the following simple code:



<?php
$file = fopen("http://www.w3schools.com/","r");
?>


But although it doesn't give any errors when I open the page, nothing happens. That code is taken straight from the w3 website, is it something to do with my host not allowing this feature? I thought it would play quite a big part for some websites so it seems sort of illogical for it to be disabled, any ideas?

Thanks,

Jack

[techietim]

It works!

You have to do something with that stream now. Might I suggest fread() (http://php.net/fread)?

[Nile]

You cannot open w3schools - you must chose a local file.

[Twey]

You can open W3Schools if allow_url_fopen is on in your host's config. As techietim said, the main problem is that you've got the stream, but you're not doing anything with it.

[Schmoopy]

I see, well that was pretty silly of me - however, I'm trying to open a file now on my C: drive that I know is there and has the path of - "C:\hello.txt".

Here is my PHP code, and the errors I get:



<?php

$filename = 'C:\\hello.txt';
$file = fopen($filename,"r");

$contents = fread($file, filesize($filename));
fclose($file);

echo $contents;


?>



Warning: fopen(C:\hello.txt) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /mnt/local/home/garlandsails/bristoldnb.co.uk/php/index.php on line 12

Warning: filesize() [function.filesize]: stat failed for C:\hello.txt in /mnt/local/home/garlandsails/bristoldnb.co.uk/php/index.php on line 14

Warning: fread(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /mnt/local/home/garlandsails/bristoldnb.co.uk/php/index.php on line 14

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /mnt/local/home/garlandsails/bristoldnb.co.uk/php/index.php on line 15

I managed to get it to work for a file on the server, just not a local file - no errors but nothing showed up, any more suggestions?

I've also tried C:\hello.txt, C:/hello.txt but both got me nowhere.

Thanks for your help thus far,

Jack

[Nile]

You've gotta put the file or directory in:


/mnt/local/home/garlandsails/bristoldnb.co.uk/php/

[Schmoopy]

Yea I have succesfully done that before, but I thought you could open a file on the local hard disk with fopen? At least that's what it says on the W3 website.

[Nile]

Can you post a link to it on the w3 site? I can't find where it says that on w3schools..
http://www.w3schools.com/php/func_filesystem_fopen.asp
Post the link from w3 though.

[Schmoopy]

I seemed to have read the page here wrongly : http://uk2.php.net/fopen

I was getting confused with how it was saying "c:\\data\\info.txt", I interpreted as the C: drive.

The other reason I was led to believe you could open a local file was because I was reading this tutorial: http://www.allsyntax.com/tutorials/PHP/3/Simple-PHP-Tutorial/6.php

And on there it says "This can be a file on your system, or a file on a remote server."

Is this just false, or could you do it on earlier versions of PHP?

Thanks,

Jack

[Nile]

You can if your doing it local host such as:


C:/wamp/www/quick.php

[Schmoopy]

Ah I see, that makes sense, I guess it would be a pretty big security issue if PHP could open files and edit them on someone's computer.

[Nile]

Haha, yeah:


$gl = glob('C://*');

Super unsecure.

[Schmoopy]

Does that search through all files on their PC? lol

[Nile]

Well - if you were allowed to open files on the hard drive. But PHP doesn't allow it(thank god).

[Twey]

When it says 'your system' it means 'the system on which the PHP script is running' — i.e. your server. The webserver cannot (directly) access files on the client machine.

This isn't a question of what PHP allows: HTTP doesn't provide a mechanism to do it (for fairly obvious reasons). Of course, if you have an FTP or SSH server set up on the HTTP client machine, it's a different matter.