Assigning an entire file to a variable.

Anon

Please help!

I'm trying to make a little "email this article to a friend" script. I can make it email a link to a 'friend' no problem, but I can't figure out how to include the contents of an entire file (the article) in an email. My code, thus far, looks something like this:

$articleurl = "http://mynewspaper.com/$volnum/$article";
$fd = fopen ($articleurl, "r");
$articlevar = fread ($fd, filesize ($articleurl));
$emailablearticle = strip_tags ($articlevar);
$message = "Here is the article: $emailablearticle";

Any ideas??
Thanks in advance!
Lucas

Anon

you are trying to read from a URL. use readfile() instead of fread()

you don't need the file descriptor for readfile.

eg..
$articlevar = readfile($articleurl);

Anon

So I've almost worked it out, but...
It outputs the text of the "read" directly into the html file (not what I want) and then when I try to use the variable that's supposed to contain the article, it just gives me the number of characters in the article! What's going on?

Here's my revised code:

$articleurl = "http://mynewspaper.com/$volnum/$article";

$fullarticle = strip_tags(stripslashes(readfile ($articleurl)));

$message = "$fullarticle\n";

Anon

The manual is a terrible thing to waste. Read the pages on readfile() and file().

Anon

Sorry for trying to get some help with what I couldn't understand on my own.

This is driving me crazy, I was up to 5 last night trying to figure it out (and, yes, that includes looking at the manual). I'm just looking for a bit of help.

Anon

steve's advice was probably the best you could get, short of someone writing a function for you

you might not like it, but reading the manual is what you should do -- as the file section gives you the exact info and directions you so desperately can't understand

writing off and insulting people who take the time to help you won't get you very far in life.

Anon

<sigh>

If you don't take the advice when it's given, it won't be of much help.

Your complaint about readfile() is that it doesn't do what you want. If you read the manual, you'd find this:

int readfile (string filename, int [use_include_path])

Reads a file and writes it to standard output.

Returns the number of bytes read from the file. If an error occurs, FALSE is returned and unless the function was called as @readfile, an error message is printed.

This is exactly the behavior you are complaining about ... it is how readfile() is SUPPOSED to work.

You want to read the file into a variable. I suggested that you read the manual page on the file() function. Did you do that?

array file (string filename [, int use_include_path])

Identical to readfile(), except that file() returns the file in an array. Each element of the array corresponds to a line in the file, with the newline still attached.

If you want a string instead of an array, read the manual page on implode().

Anon

Thanks Steve. I got it figured out finally. I don't write much code, so little things like variations in syntax and case sensitivity that aren't necessarily spelled out in the manual tend to throw me... Anyway I spent a LONG time trying to get it to work and hearing that I should just read what I've already read and didn't fully understand kinda pissed me off. Sorry. Thanks for your time.
Lucas