Retreiving wav files from database

ash_murali

Hi all,
I was able to upload the wav files into mysql database and iam able to retrieve the files but iam not able to play it in the php page.

its printing the some junk text. Iam not able to understand whether it is the problem with the content type or do i have to use files...

Iam posting my code below.

<html>
<head>
<title>The Rsvp List for Events</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="design.css" />
<style type="text/css">
</style>
</head>

<body>

/I have some html code here/

<?php
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'composit_cap', 'cap05');
if (!$link) {
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db('composit_capstone');

$result = mysql_query("SELECT owner_msgs FROM gp1_ownermsgs WHERE owner_phno='7814111234'");

if (!$result) {
echo 'Could not run query: ' . mysql_error();
exit;
}

$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);

$wave_file = $row[0];
if (!$handle = fopen("rsvp_phno.wav", 'wb')) {
echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
exit;
}

if (fwrite($handle, $wav_file) === FALSE) {
echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
exit;
}
echo "Success, wrote ($handle) to file ";
echo "<EMBED SRC=\"$handle\" HIDDEN=\"TRUE\" AUTOSTART=\"TRUE\"></EMBED>";
fclose($handle);
</body>
<html>

justsomeone

This isn't something I've done before, but a couple of things come to mind with your code:

$wave_file = $row[0];
if (!$handle = fopen("rsvp_phno.wav", 'wb')) {
echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
exit;
}


if (fwrite($handle, $wav_file) === FALSE) {
echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
exit;
}
echo "Success, wrote ($handle) to file ";
echo "<EMBED SRC=\"$handle\" HIDDEN=\"TRUE\" AUTOSTART=\"TRUE\"></EMBED>";
fclose($handle);

I'm not sure what the signifigance of $filename is. Assuming that you successfully retrieve the wav data from t he database into the $wav_file variable, you then try to write to a local file called "rsp_phno.wav", but the associated error messages refer to $filename.

Some questions/observations for you:

Does your web server have the necessary permissions to write the wav file to disk?
The EMBED tag should contain the full web path to the wav file. You're putting in the value of the file handle, which is way different.
It looks like you have a variable changing name in this snippet as well. $wav_file and $wave_file
What's $filename? You've got the actual file name hardcoded. You can't do that or user 2 will overwrite user 1's file. I hope this is just part of your debugging efforts.
I doubt if it will make a difference, but I would do the fclose before echoing the EMBED tag.

ash_murali

Hi Justsomeone,
Thanks a lot for the suggestions.

You were correct the variable name ($wav_file) was wrong.
the $filename is supposed to be the file which i opened locally i.e rsvp_phno.wav

I was looking new ways to do the same without correcting my code. Last night i was browsing and i found this forum and then i posted it with some hope that i would find some advise after I get up in the morning.

I followed your suggestions and i could play the file now.

Thank You..
Murali.

justsomeone

You're very welcome.

There is still one issue though. If you hard code the filename, then you can't reliably have multiple people accessing the service at the same time and hoping to hear different sounds.

User1 and User2 arrive at approximately the same time. User1 is marginally ahead.
User1 selects his file and it's saved to the file rsvp_phno.wav. A fraction of a second later, User2 selects his file and overwrites rsvp_phno.wav with his selection. Another fraction of a second later, User1's EMBED request (which has to go all the way from the server to User1's PC and back again) arrives to play rsvp_phono.wav. But it's now got User2's contents, so User1 hears User2's file. Nobody's happy.

Instead of using a constant name you should create a unique filename each time, or just use the value of owner_phno as the filename. That will avoid the mixups.

Finally, if you go with the above, and store the wav in the database only to extract it to a file you might want to think about why you need to store the wav in the database at all - you could just store the wav as a file to begin with.

Enjoy the ride!

ash_murali

Hi J,
Thank You for being so helpful.

My situation is little bit different. We are trying to develop a personal voice portal in which the user can upload different voice messages and can select only one to be activated at a time.

So i have a field called "active" in my database table where only one among all the files will be active at once.

The portal owner can selected one msg to be active and we are implementing it in the frontend.

I have to retrieve only that particular wav file and the users can listen to only that message (the active one).

hope iam clear in explaining....

this is my first time in a forum... and iam completely new to php and voice xml....

thanx again.
Murali.

justsomeone

Hi Murali,

I don't fully understand how it's meant to work - but that doesn't matter. If it does work and you're happy with how it works, that's good enough for me. 🙂