Counter not Counting - ideas?

[twistedfrog]

Hey guys,

I am trying to make a simple, text based counter. Here is my code:

<?php
$counter_file = ("hitcounter.txt");
$visits = file($counter_file);
$visits[0]++;
$fp = fopen($counter_file , "w");
fputs($fp , "$visits[0]");
fclose($fp);
echo($visits[0]);
?>

This displays the number in hitcounter.txt but it never increments.

Anyone have an idea?

Thanks.

[laserlight]

Debug it.

<?php
$counter_filename = "hitcounter.txt";
if ($visits = file_get_contents($counter_filename)) {
	$visits++;
	if ($fp = fopen($counter_filename, "w")) {
		if (!fwrite($fp, $visits)) {
			echo "Warning: could not increase counter.<br />\n";
		}
		fclose($fp);
	} else {
		echo "Warning: could not access counter.<br />\n";
	}
	echo "Count: " . $visits;
} else {
	echo "Error: Could not access counter.";
}
?>

[twistedfrog]

I used the debugging code, and it returned an even more interesting result.

It returned "Warning could not access counter"

BUT it returns 1. I realize this is coming from the visits++

however, what is wrong with this statement?

$fp = fopen($counter_filename, "w")

[kburger]

Sounds like your webserver user doesn't have write access to the file.

[twistedfrog]

Everything is setup for read, write, and execute for the user - any other ideas?

[laserlight]

Debug some more.

I cant spoonfeed you all the way.
Use your imagination and refer to the PHP Manual.

[twistedfrog]

Whoa - I'm not looking for spoon feeding. The code runs to end and gets to exactly where I want it to be, but it never increments the number in the textfile. I just asked if anyone had some insight into why. If you don't that's great, but let me point out that the name of the forum is PHP Help > Coding. Guess what, I am looking for some help with PHP coding.

I'm looking for some help, not to get flamed. Telling someone to debug their code isn't really helpful.

[laserlight]

The code runs to end and gets to exactly where I want it to be, but it never increments the number in the textfile.

Which makes it rather useless for your purposes, of course.

The first step is to pinpoint where it starts to go haywire.
I gave an example of what one might do in debugging, and so far it seems that the fopen() call fails.
Now you need to figure out why, otherwise you cant write anything to the file, and clearly you cant increment the counter if you cant write to the file.

For starters, double check that your permissions are correct.
Use [man]is_writable/man to explicitly test if the file can be written to.

[twistedfrog]

All the function calls worked and everything seemed to be well constructed. Just for a heads up to anyone else who might encounter a similar problem this is the code that failed:

$visits++;

For some reason that code never actually incremented $visits when it was written back into textfile. I am guessing since it is a post-op unary operator it would increment at the end of block. Scope issue? That is just a guess. In the end this works with the same code:

++$visits;

shrug

[laserlight]

That's unusual.
Did you change the code from my sample?

Though there may be a bug due to my forgetting to check with:
if (($visits = file_get_contents($counter_filename)) !== false)
but that is easily fixed and shouldnt produce a mysterious difference between pre-increment and post-increment when used on a separate line.