Newbie...need some help

dtwconsulting

I'm looking to start coding with PHP (and I've done a little already) and need some help from people that have been there and done it.

I'm looking (and I have no idea if this is even possible) to have a web based form that will allow the user the eject the CD tray and enter an audio CD into the PC that they are currently accessing the webpage from, i.e., on the client and not the server. The code should then detect that the tray has been closed, check the CD type and then be able to read some info off the CD which can then be passed back to the server control and stored in a DB, which would be MySQL.

So, I know that this really isn't possible in PHP since this is server side code. I'm assuming that I'd need either java or VBS. Is this a correct assumption?

Also, if anyone can point in the direction of code samples and how to incorporate these into PHP I'd appreciate that very much.

Many thanks and I look forward to your friendly help on this.

rikmoncur

VBScript can open and close dvd and cd drives - depending on the users security setup etc.

dtwconsulting

rikmoncur,

Thanks for that. Don't suppose you have any examples of this? No idea about VBScript, but looks like I'll have to learn.

Thanks.

rikmoncur

http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/03/27/open_cdr.shtml

dtwconsulting

Maybe a different approach on this if I may.

Is there a way in PHP that I can check if there is a CD in the client drive and read that CD, or at least read what kind of CD it is..i.e., Audio, data, etc.

Thanks.

dtwconsulting

Unfortunately this code doesn't work at all for me. It could be that this was developed for WMP version 7 and I have version 10 🙁

Is there no standard way of doing this, perhaps via javascript that I can embed?

Thanks.

rikmoncur wrote:
http://www.waxy.org/archive/2003/03/27/open_cdr.shtml

jara06

javascript = clientside
php = serverside

it could maybe be possible if using a program to do that. php can execute system commands, if not setup too strict. A default apache & php on a windows box should be able to do so.

About reading the cd, should be feasible too, or you could just map the drive to a webfolder (like http://somedomain.com/cd/) ..
Depends on many factors

dtwconsulting

Jara,

Right, I realise that php = serverside and javascript is clientside. I suspect most php programmers have embedded javascript into their php code.

Right now trying to determine how I can read the contents of a current CD. I suspect this must be done via javascript no?

jara06

you are being specific enough.
Eg. you want to read the cd on a remote webserver or the cd in your own computer ?

And, programmers dont embed js in php code, but they may embed js in html which is embedded in php 🙂
$var = "<html><head><title>blop</title><script type=\"text/javascript\"> document.write(' Hello world from js'); </script></head><body>Hello world from html</body></html>";

echo $var;
echo "hello world from php";

dtwconsulting

Jara06,

Sorry for not being specific enough. I want to be able to read the CD on the client. So, my php code is on server X and I am accessing that from my laptop. I want to be able to read the contents of the CD in laptop. Hope I'm more clear now.

Also,thanks for the correction about the embedding of code 🙂

dtwconsulting

Ok, found this piece of VB code.

Is it possible to embed this in the html 🙂 If so then how would this be done?

Private Declare Function mciSendString Lib "winmm.dll" Alias "mciSendStringA" (ByVal lpstrCommand As String, ByVal lpstrReturnString As String, ByVal uReturnLength As Long, ByVal hwndCallback As Long) As Long

Public Function OpenCD() As Boolean
Dim RetVal As Long
RetVal = mciSendString("set CDAudio door open", returnstring, 127, 0)
If RetVal = 0 Then OpenCD = True Else OpenCD = False
End Function

Public Function CloseCD() As Boolean
Dim RetVal As Long
RetVal = mciSendString("set CDAudio door closed", returnstring, 127, 0)
If RetVal = 0 Then CloseCD = True Else CloseCD = False
End Function

Private Sub Form_Load()
OpenCD
CloseCD
End Sub

Weedpacket

It's not a PHP question any more, is it? If you want to go mucking about with site visitors' hardware, then you're going to have to concentrate on doing stuff on their computers. PHP is not going to help with that.

dtwconsulting

Weedpacket,

True enough. I was hoping that someone on here could point me in the right direction however. I would imagine that most people that code in PHP need to do some client stuff from time to time.

But I do appreciate that this is not a PHP question anymore.

Cheers.