STDIN with PHP?

Anon

Hello all,

I'm working on porting some existing Perl code to PHP, but I'm having trouble finding a good match for the following snippet:

binmode STDIN;
read(STDIN,$buffer,$ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});

Basically, the PHP file is called with the POST method, and then a binary stream is sent to it, which it is supposed to read into a buffer and manipulate before saving to a file.

Because I am working with an already-written applet that sends the data to the server, I cannot change the method in which the data is sent. I have to fill a buffer the same way.

I tried peeking in $HTTP_POST_VARS and $HTTP_ENV_VARS, though both are empty (no values at all). The headers indicate that the stream is coming across, as Content-Length matches the size of the stream, and Content-type is always "application/octet-stream."

Are there any PHP gurus out there that can help me with this? Once I fill the buffer with the data stream, the rest of the process is relatively easy.

Thanks in advance for any help!

-- Tails

Anon

I have never actually attempted to do what you are describing, but if you look at fopen():

http://www.php.net/fopen

You can open a connection to stdin by doing:

fopen("php://stdin", "r");

And then from there you may use the standard fread etc functions. I think this may be what you are looking for.

Hope that helps:

Chris King

Anon

Chris,

I have tried using the method you suggested, and am not getting any data for some reason.

Here's the code:

$file = fopen ("output.html", "a");

$binStream = fopen("php://stdin", "r");

if ($binStream)
{
fwrite($file, "[begin variable output]<BR>\n");
$buffer = fread($binStream, 4096);
fwrite($file, $buffer);
fwrite($file, "[end variable output]<BR>\n");
}
else
{
fwrite($file, "[Couldn't open the stream.]<BR>\n");
}

fclose($binStream);
fclose($file);

Of course, when I go to view output.html, I get:

[begin variable output]
[end variable output]

Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,
-- Tails