Reading Directory permissions

[Anon]

Is there anyway in PHP3 to read directory permissions on a directory/file on a Linux/Apache box?

Based on the permissions, I would either open up the directory and read the contents or if once the permissions were read and a given directory said that I could read the directory's content, I would just print out the name of the directory instead of getting the permission unable to chdir error that I am getting now.

Any and all assistance is wonderful.

Kind Regards,

Heather

[Anon]

Heather, have a browse throught the PHP manual section about filesystem functions. I think you'll find it very helpfull. (wow, what a polite way to say RTFM :-) )

fileperms

(PHP3 , PHP4 )

fileperms -- Gets file permissions

Description

int fileperms (string filename)

Returns the permissions on the file, or false in case of an error.

The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.

[Anon]

Vincent,

This is great for files. But it appears that it doesn't work for directories.

And yes, I RTFM. 🙂

Your insights are wonderful and appreciated.

Any more ideas?

Cheers,

Heather

[Anon]

If you can't find a function, why not try to read the contents of the directory first. Use error handling, and if an error occurs, then you will know the permissions don't allow you to view the dir. This won't give you exactly what you want, but pretty close...

[Anon]

Darren,

Thanks for the ideas.

1. How would I use error handling in this situation?

I am still new to php and found one script but it didn't really work.

My script goes in read the directory and then procedes to open directory. I get errors when the directory can't be opened.

Here is my script.$basedir = "/home/"; // Base directory

function listall($dir)
{
// Initialize temporary arrays for sorting
$dir_files = $dir_subdirs = array();

 // Print current directory
print( "<ul>");
print( "<li><b>$dir</b>\n");

 // Change to directory

   chdir($dir);

 // Open directory;
if ($dir == "/home/ahumphre/") {
   print ("this is allans special directory");
   }
   else {
        $handle = @opendir($dir);
   }

// or die( "Directory \"$dir\"not found.");
// Loop through all directory entries, construct
// two temporary arrays containing files and sub directories
while($entry = readdir($handle))
{
if(is_dir($entry) && $entry != ".." && $entry != ".")
{
$dir_subdirs[] = $entry;
}
elseif($entry != ".." && $entry != ".")
{
$dir_files[] = $entry;
}
}

 // Sort files and sub directories
sort($dir_files);
sort($dir_subdirs);

 // Print all files in the curent directory
for($i=0; $i<count($dir_files); $i++)

 print( "<li>$dir_files[$i]\n");
}

 // Traverse sub directories
for($i=0; $i<count($dir_subdirs); $i++)
{
    listall( "$dir$dir_subdirs[$i]/");
}
print( "</ul>");
 // Close directory
closedir($handle);

}
listall($basedir);
?>

Thanks in advance for your help!

Heather

[Anon]

Vincent's original idea of checking the manual is still very valid. If you go to
http://www.php.net/manual/ref.filesystem.php
you'll find a number of functions that might help. One particular one that jumps out is is_readable(). You might like to do something like:

if (is_readable($dir)) {
$handle = opendir($dir);

BTW, readdir() returns only the filename (foo.txt) not the entire pathname (/path/to/foo.txt), so you might find it worthwhile to actually code it like this:

if (is_readable($dir)) {
chdir($dir);
$handle = openddir(".");

That way, the later is_dir($entry) might actually have a chance of returning something valid, because $entry probably doesn't exist in the current directory that the script is using.

-spp