Little help with PHP...

[MYT]

Hi all,

I have built a message board in Flash which uses the following code to send, write and read:

if (!isset($name) || !isset($email) || !isset($message) || empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Input required for all fields.");
exit;
}

$email = strtolower($email);

addentry($name, $email, $message);

function addentry($name, $email, $message) {

$posted = strftime("%D %I:%M %p");

$message = stripslashes($message);

$file = fopen('entry.txt', 'a+');

if (!$file) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Could not open entry.txt file. Change CHMOD levels to 766.");
exit;
}

fputs($file, "<font color=\"#000000\">Name:</font> $name\n<font color=\"#000000\">Email:</font> <font color=\"#000000\"><u><A href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</A></u></font><br>\n<font color=\"#000000\">Posted:</font> $posted\n<font color=\"#000000\">Message:</font> $message\n\n");
fclose($file);

// Send admin an email when new entry occurs
mailAdmin($name, $email, $message);
}

function mailAdmin($name, $email, $message) {
	$mailTo = "my@mail.co.uk";
	$mailFrom = "From: <my@mail.co.uk>";
	$mailSubject = "New Guestbook Entry";
	$mailBody = "A visitor to your site has left the following information in your guestbook:\n
	Name: $name
	Email: $email
	The visitor commented:
	------------------------------
	$message 
	------------------------------
	You can view the message at:
	http://www.yoursite.com";
	mail($mailTo, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailFrom);
}

print "&result=okay";
exit;

?>

Basically I need to write to the beginning of the file each time, so that the most recent message is shown at the top.

I've tried fiddling around with the read/write attributes (a+,w,r+... etc) but to no avail!!!

Any help is much appreciated,

Thanks in advance.

[keyone.it]

You should use:

fseek($file, 0); 

or

rewind($file); 

right before your

fputs($file, "blablabla"); 

By the way, I don't understand why "fputs" is used instead of "fwrite".. it's a sinonym but it's much less known... anyway..

For further info you should visit http://www.php.net/. Just type "fwrite" in the search box, you will be pointer to file handling functions documentation.

Cheers

[MYT]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply but neither fseek or rewind made any difference - the new posts are still being written at the end of the file!

Any other ideas?

Thanks again!

M

[Musicman]

Hi

short info on file modes (see documentation about fopen on www.php.net or elsewhere)
r - open for read
w - open for write
a - open for append (new info will appear at the end)
r+ - open for read followed by write (with an intermediate fseek)
w+ - open for write first, followed by read
There is no way to insert new data before existing one, so your script has to do it
- fopen file in r+ mode
- flock() the file
- read entire file into a variable
- fseek to beginning of file
- write new data
- write old data from variable
Note the flock() here - you certainly do not want this to happen in two simultaneous processes at the same time

Musicman

[MYT]

Hi Musicman,

Many thanks for the reply, so is this correct?:

if (!isset($name) || !isset($email) || !isset($message) || empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Input required for all fields.");
exit;
}

$email = strtolower($email);

addentry($name, $email, $message);

function addentry($name, $email, $message) {

$posted = strftime("%D %I:%M %p");

$message = stripslashes($message);

$file = fopen('entry.txt', 'r+');
flock($file);
fseek($file, 0);

if (!$file) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Could not open entry.txt file. Change CHMOD levels to 766.");
exit;
}

fputs($file, "<font color=\"#000000\">Name:</font> $name\n<font color=\"#000000\">Email:</font> <font color=\"#000000\"><u><A href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</A></u></font><br>\n<font color=\"#000000\">Posted:</font> $posted\n<font color=\"#000000\">Message:</font> $message\n\n");
fclose($file);

// Send admin an email when new entry occurs
mailAdmin($name, $email, $message);
}

function mailAdmin($name, $email, $message) {
	$mailTo = "my@mail.co.uk";
	$mailFrom = "From: <my@mail.co.uk>";
	$mailSubject = "New Guestbook Entry";
	$mailBody = "A visitor to your site has left the following information in your guestbook:\n
	Name: $name
	Email: $email
	The visitor commented:
	------------------------------
	$message 
	------------------------------
	You can view the message at:
	http://www.yoursite.com";
	mail($mailTo, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailFrom);
}

print "&result=okay";
exit;

[Musicman]

Hi,

this is just a snippet from your code, with changes added:

$file = fopen('entry.txt', 'r+');
flock($file, LOCK_EX);  // tell flock what it should do
$old = fread($file, filesize($file));  // read in old data first
fseek($file, 0);

if (!$file) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Could not open entry.txt file. Change CHMOD levels to 666.");   // 766 makes no sense for text files 
exit;
}

fputs($file, "<font color=\"#000000\">Name:</font> $name\n<font color=\"#000000\">Email:</font> <font color=\"#000000\"><u><A href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</A></u></font><br>\n<font color=\"#000000\">Posted:</font> $posted\n<font color=\"#000000\">Message:</font> $message\n\n");
fputs($file, $old);  // write back old data
// flock($file, LOCK_UN); // this would unlock the file after use
fclose($file);  // but closing it will unlock it anyway

Musicman

[MYT]

Hi Musicman,

Thanks so much for following this up for me - I think I'm nearly there, I realised that I needed to keep the first 21 characters contained in entry.txt for the flash to display everything properly (&result=okay&entries=). So basically we need to open the file, seek to the 22nd character, copy that info to a variable, write the new data then paste in the old stuff underneath.

This is where I'm at - not sure if I've addressed seek correctly by writing it as fseek($file, 21);

Here's how the script is looking - it seems to write the data over itself, so only maintains one entry rather than writing after:

<?

if (!isset($name) || !isset($email) || !isset($message) || empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Input required for all fields.");
exit;
}

$email = strtolower($email);

addentry($name, $email, $message);

function addentry($name, $email, $message) {

$posted = strftime("%D %I:%M %p");

$message = stripslashes($message);

$file = fopen('entry.txt', 'r+');
flock($file, LOCK_EX);  // tell flock what it should do
$old = fread($file, filesize($file));  // read in old data first
fseek($file, 21);

if (!$file) {
print "&result=Fail";
print "&errorMsg=" . urlencode("Could not open entry.txt file. Change CHMOD levels to 666.");   // 766 makes no sense for text files 
exit;
}

fputs($file, "<font color=\"#000000\">Name:</font> $name\n<font color=\"#000000\">Email:</font> <font color=\"#000000\"><u><A href=\"mailto:$email\">$email</A></u></font><br>\n<font color=\"#000000\">Posted:</font> $posted\n<font color=\"#000000\">Message:</font> $message\n\n");
fputs($file, $old);  // write back old data
// flock($file, LOCK_UN); // this would unlock the file after use
fclose($file);  // but closing it will unlock it anyway

// Send admin an email when new entry occurs
mailAdmin($name, $email, $message);
}

function mailAdmin($name, $email, $message) {
	$mailTo = "my@mail.co.uk";
	$mailFrom = "From: <my@mail.co.uk>";
	$mailSubject = "New Guestbook Entry";
	$mailBody = "A visitor to your site has left the following information in your guestbook:\n
	Name: $name
	Email: $email
	The visitor commented:
	------------------------------
	$message 
	------------------------------
	You can view the message at:
	http://www.mysite.com";
	mail($mailTo, $mailSubject, $mailBody, $mailFrom);
}

print "&result=okay";
exit;

?>

Thanks so much for persisting with me - I appreciate that it's probably infuriating and that I'm making rudimentry mistakes but I'm still learning

Matt

[Musicman]

Hi,

this should be
fseek($file, 21, 0);
.... and should have been fseek($file, 0, 0) in my previous reply, too. The 0 signifies that the value is measured relative to the start of the file, other possibilities are relative to current position or relative to the end of file

Musicman

[MYT]

Hi Musicman,

I've updated the fseek as directed but it still doesn't seem to be writing the full version of previous messages after a new submission.

To see what I'm banging on about go to the 'Comments' page at http://www.stylefrogcreative.com/theinvention/ and submit a few new entries.

Thanks again!!!