Weird filing problem

edsko

Hi,

I recently set up a simple site for a caravan park (www.northbeach.ie). One of the things they wanted was a guestbook - so I implemented a guestbook in PHP.

The idea is very simple. The user fills in a form, and the script will then add the data into an HTML document (in formatted form).

The guestbook viewer then is simply a link to that file.

Every time I try it, it works fine - no problem at all. Likewise for a number of other people, but I also got reactions from a large number of people who tried to sign the guestbook -- but their contribution never got saved.

I really do not understand how this could be happening. Any suggestions (any at all) would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Edsko

harlan

How is the guestbook being saved? You didn't make that clear

in a database and extracted and parsed into html?
Flat text files that get read and parsed into HTML?
Being attached to the end of a premade HTML file?

If you're using a database, then I have no idea.

If you're doing anything besides using a database, then there might be concurrancy problems. What happens if one person tries to add an entry while someone else is reading the file? What happens if two people two try sign at once and both try to write to the file at once?

--harlan

edsko

Hi,

First of all thank you for your answer.
Second, I am not using a database as the server that I'm using does not support any database 🙁

Therefore, the information entered by the user is parsed, formatted and then appended to an HTML file.

I thought of the problem you were describing, but I thought it unlikely as the site is not very popular (yet? :-)
However, I thought the problem would only occur when two people tried to sign the guestbook simultaneously. Is that not correct?

Anyway, I'll try to solve that problem (use flock, is it?)

Thanks again

Edsko

Anon

Reading and writing may not be the problem, but its the only thing that comes to mind without examining code. You might want to try duplicating the problem by reading and writing or writing and writing at the same time.

--harlan

Anon

Also - Even if it isn't a high-traffic site, you might want to get around to fixing it. It only takes one happening of write-write to blow your data file.