resource id's

[Anon]

Hi,

I encountered a strange problem when coding my latest little PHP thingy.
The problem is this; I'm opening a socket connection with pfsockopen() and am then using that resource id i get to read/write data to the socket (as is assumed.) echo $my_id; gives me "Resource id #1" and gettype($my_id); gives "integer" and all works well, until I register the variable in a session and later try to use it again, then echo $my_id; gives "0". I can typecast it to an integer before storing it in the session but then I can't use it later 'cos I get a warning saying it's "..not a valid resource id". I don't want to have to store all the data needed to call pfsockopen() again to get the id back, so what to do? Shouldn't this work?

Thankful for quick response,
Anders

[Anon]

Hmm... so you want to open a connection, store it's id, close it,
go to the next page, get the id from a session and use it?

That's not quite how it works.
Resource ID's are identifiers that PHP uses on a "per script" basis,
for connection that have been opened by that script (and any included scripts)
You may see "resource ID #1", but that is only a pointer to a connection,
It's true meaning is store by php, and lost as soon as the script ends.

You'll have to open a fresh connection every time you run a script!

Anyway, what would happen if your session contains a resouce ID to a socket connection that has been closed by another script?

[Anon]

Well.. I don't fclose() the connection before going to the next page, but I get your point. I'll have to make a class for this now.
I don't know what happens if I use a resource id from another script since I don't know how to (if it's even possible) typecast it back to a resource id 🙂 ..
Thanks for the insight!

[Anon]

The point is that if you close a script, PHP closes just about everything you openened in it. That means that any resource ID's you created during the run of the script become invalid, and there is no way of using them ever again.
You can only create a new one.

You're welcome. 🙂

[Anon]

I'm messing with these and have found that you just fclose it and pfsockopen it again on the next page... it will resume where it left off for the most part. one issues that im looking at now is.. what if you want to close it and create a new one?

[[deleted]]

Read the annotations in the manual....

[Anon]

Where?

I looked on the manual pages here for annotations.. they don't seem to be there..not like they are for www.php.net anyways. shrug

Can you give me a URL?

[[deleted]]

A URl to where?

[Anon]

You said "Read the annotations in the manual...."

Where can I find these annotations? I already read the annotations on www.php.net and they didn't answer my question.

BTW, I have pfsockopen working.. I'm wondering.. since you pfsockopen() and fclose() a persistant connection between pages to just use it normally, how do you actually stop persisting and fclose() the connection for good?

[[deleted]]

Those are the annotations I meant. They explain about the persistant connections and how they close on timeout, not on flcose()

[Anon]

i have the same problem. i want to open a socket connection on page1.php, and use it on page2.php. now, as far as i found out, you cannot transfer a resource_id from one page to another. pfsockopen does nothing more than: look if a connection to host/port exists, if yes, use it, if no create a connection. however, if you find a solution, give me a note..

moritz

[Anon]

I worked around it by using a regular socket and running the script to ignore user abort. To handle input and output, I used a mysql database.

example:

user wants to connect host1.

script connects to host1 through page1.php
user is redirected via javascript with a document.location='page2.php' after the connection has been established. the script keeps running until stopped by an exit() command or the webserver is restarted. this is done much like the daemons you will see others writing.

page1 then continues running and looks at the database field 'send' every second and then sends data through the socket when there is something there.. and then empties the field once the data is sent.

page1 also takes any data received through the socket and places in the database field 'receive'.

page2 then displays the entire contents of the receive field to the user and uses the same javascript above to reload the page after 8 or so seconds. this continues until no needed (you decide).

page3 (which is viewed at the same time as
page2, but in a different frame) allows the user to enter text to send. When submitted, it adds the text to the 'send' field of the database mentioned above.

this is the basic idea that i used to implement an IRC client. a buddy has given me a saying that sticks with me in a lot of things like this that i write: "It's ghetto, but it works". It does work but also is a major hack around php's inabilities.

let me know how your script goes if you decide to use this method. feel free to email me if you have any questions.

[Anon]

I "solved" it by creating a class which does all the communication to my target system and register the class in a session variable. The within the class I just store all the needed info to reconnect and use pfsockopen() in every communications function.
For example I have class->Login(host, port, user, pwd) and class->Logout() where Login(...) stores its parameters inside the class and do a pfsockopen(), Logout() uses the class variables set by Login() and also pfsockopen()'s ..