fread returns nothing if a less than is in the file

Debbie-Leigh

Hi,

I'm having a problem with fread.

I'm trying to read a file from one of my sub-domains that contains some html using an url, so I can display it on another sub-domain. I've found that if the file contains a less than character, nothing is returned, whereas if I take the less than out, the rest of the text is returned normally.

I've tried playing with the options of fopen, changing the file extension to .htm and .txt and even using file_get_contents, but it makes no difference.

Can anyone suggest why this is happening and what I can do to get it to treat the file as just plain text.

Debbie-Leigh

planetsim

Can you show the format of what your trying to read, also some code. Im not too sure on what your going about with a less than character do you mean

"<" without the quote?

Debbie-Leigh

The code I'm using is:

$strData = "";

if  ($resFile = @fopen($strFilename, "rb")):
	do  {
		$strBuffer = @fread($resFile, 8192);
		if  (strlen($strBuffer) == 0):
			break;
		else:
			$strData .= $strBuffer;
		endif;

} while(TRUE);

@fclose($resFile);
return $strData;
else:
	return FALSE;
endif;

I've done a little more testing and it seems that if I use this:

<html>
<head>
<title>Download Login</title>
</head>
</html>

It works, but if I use this:

<html>
<head>
<title>Download Login</title>
<meta name="Keywords" content="download,login" />
</head>
</html>

it doesn't work, but if I take out the content bit of the meta tag, it works again. This is with the extension as both .htm and .txt.

It seems that something is interpreting the text instead of just passing through as plain text.

What I'm tryng to do is read the html file (the real one contains php code too) and interpret it on this server rather than the one where it's stored.

To do this, my thinking is that I need to read it as text first then eval it, but fopen/fread doesn't seem to be reading it as plain text.

Debbie-Leigh

rehfeld

btw- heres an easier way to read


$buffer = '';
$fp = fopen('foo.txt');
while (!feof($fp)) {
    $buffer .= fread($fp, 1024);
}
fclose($fp);

// or easiest way

$content = file_get_contents('foo.txt');

most likely the reason you "think" its not working is because your browser is getting confused from the double html. try looking at the html source your script outputs, i bet its working just fine.

if you want to show the html source in the browser, without the browser interpreting it as html, look at htmlentites()

Debbie-Leigh

Hi rehfeld,

Appreciate the short version, but I don't think that's the problem as I've found that if I read the exact same file from the local filesystem with a relative url, it works, but if I use a full url for either the local or remote site it gets confused.

Is there maybe something other setting that I need to use if I use a full url with fopen?

As I say, I need to read it as a text file and then interpret it on the local server which has all the necessary variables defined whereas the remote server doesn't.

Debbie-Leigh

rehfeld

there is a setting in php.ini for whether to allow to be used urls in fopen() (applies to file_get_contents() too)

allow_url_fopen

but its ONLY changable via php.ini

if its off, i beleive php normally will spit out an error or warning, but maybe your error_reporting level prevents it from displaying the warning.

Debbie-Leigh

allow_urls_fopen is on, but I've now discovered that it seems to only happen when I'm reading a file from my development server. When I point to the same file with a full url on my live server or even use a file path on my dev server, it's read with no problem regardless of whether I use the r or rb mode.

So does anyone know of a PHP or Apache setting that might influence this kind of full url read problem?

Debbie-Leigh