Copying a directory and all of its contents

Rulkster

Hi, is there an easy way to copy a directory and all of its contents (sub directories, files) to another directory from a script. I have a form where a user signs up and a directory is created for them. They choose the name of that directory, then I want to copy another directory into that directory.

Hope that made sense.

Rulkster

dalecosp

I suppose it depends on a few things about your environment, most notable file permissions and such.

PHP has a [man]copy/man function. Of course, it sounds like this is a web server processing the PHP, so the target dir would have to be writeable by the web server process ID. You'd need to simply script the process of copying from the source to the target directories in PHP.

It's possible in some environments to do system calls (e.g., 'Nix cp /usr/share/skel/* /home/public/$userdir/) using [man]system/man or [man]shell_exec/man and that might work as well.

A third strategy is to have the web server copy the dir to a temporary location, and have cron(8) or something similar move the files to the new location with a shell script or batch file, etc.

jenni

Did you ever get this working? I'm trying to do the same thing. I tried the system() function, but it did not work for me.

dalecosp

Originally posted by jenni
Did you ever get this working? I'm trying to do the same thing. I tried the system() function, but it did not work for me.

What was done in an attempt to copy, and what was the result --- also, were there any error messages?

See http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html 😉

jenni

Sorry...It displays no errors. All I get is my little message saying it didn't work.

The cp command works perfectly on the command line, so it isn't that.

Is there something like "die(mysql_error())

jenni

note...I also changed the permissions on all of the files that I am copying to 777. (They are outside the web directory, so I thought it would be ok.) Still no luck.

dalecosp

Before any further "to do", here are some of the relevant pages from the [man]manual[/man]:

[man]copy[/man]
[man]system[/man]
[man]exec [/man]
[man]shell_exec[/man]
[man]passthru[/man]

You might also wish to search these forums. IIRC, I made a rather thorough explanation of these some time ago to someone else. In re: "is there something like die(error) ... some of these can give you a return code; and there's always "if" 😉

Note that if PHP is in safe mode, most of the above bets are off. shell_exec() won't work at all, and system() only works in directories as noted in php.ini....

As for the permissions, 777 should take care of it, but be aware of the fact that folder permissions, not just file permissions, should also be checked.

Finally:

The cp command works perfectly on the command line, so it isn't that.

Are you sure that php knows where "cp" is located? Likely the webserver's path isn't the same as yours ....

jenni

It works! Thank you so much for all your help. I tried so many things that I'm not sure exactly what made it work, but basically...

I made all of the files that will be copied 777. (Including subdirectories and the files in them...I think that was part of the problem)

Then, I just used

<?
$command="cp -r $siteToCopy/* $directoryToCopyTo";
system("$command");
?>