fopen() problems

[neridaj]

Hello,

 

I'm just following some php tutorials regarding file access and can't seem to successfully open a file. Here is what I have:

 

$DOCUMENT_ROOT = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$fp = fopen("$DOCUMENT_ROOT/../orders/orders.txt", 'ab');
if(!$fp){
echo '<p>There was a problem with your order, sorry!</p>';
exit;
}

 

 

I have an "orders" directory that resides just outside of "/Library/WebServer/Documents/", which is $DOCUMENT_ROOT, is this the correct path?

 

Thanks,

 

Jason

[balistic]

where is the script being ran from?

[.josh]

../ does not mean document root. It means the folder immediately above the one you're in.  Example:

 

http://www.somesite.com/folderA/folderB/folderC/somescript.php

 

inside somescript.php:

 

../orders.txt is the same as

http://www.somesite.com/folderA/folderB/orders.txt

 

../../orders.txt is the same as

http://www.somesite.com/folderA/orders.txt

 

etc...

[DarkWater]

@CV: That's why he included the document path...

 

I'd suggest checking out realpath() to fix up those ../'s and stuff.

[.josh]

Well I was mostly just explaining to him what ../ meant so as to give him an idea of how to find the correct path.  If

 

/Library/WebServer/Documents/

 

is the document root, and you're saying that your orders directory is just 'outside' of that, do you mean to say that this

 

/Library/WebServer/orders/orders.txt

 

is the path to the fie?

 

[neridaj]

I know that ../ gets me out of the dir. In this example script the full path based on the OSX install of Apache is "/Library/WebServer/Documents/" - where the script is being run from. So, does "/Library/WebServer/Documents/../orders/orders.txt" point to a file located between "/Library/WebServer/Documents/" and "orders/" i.e., a file sitting in "/Library/WebServer/Documents/"?

 

In any case it doesn't seem to matter where I'm trying to fopen() from, if I use "orders/orders.txt" or even "orders.txt" as the file path param, it always returns false.

[.josh]

If the full path of your file is for instance

 

/Library/WebServer/Documents/foo/bar/orders/orders.txt

 

and you do

 

/Library/WebServer/Documents/../orders/orders.txt

 

that's the same as saying

 

/Library/WebServer/Documents/bar/orders/orders.txt

 

which will result in a 404 error or false or whatever, depending on how you're trying to access it.

 

 

[neridaj]

The file path is directly from a PHP book and I believe the path was setup this way to prevent problems when moving to a different server. In any case, fopen() returns false no matter what file path is given.

[Andy-H]

orders.txt is chmodded to 666?

[neridaj]

It turns out that I needed to chmod the dir, thanks man.