Modifying a Text File - Help Please!

trevorsg

Hi,
I have a news section on my site that I want to be able to update using an HTML form. I got the PHP script working except for one problem: the new entry writes over old text. My PHP code is:

<?
$filename = "test.txt";
$theText = $_POST["date"] . ": " . $_POST["news"] . "\r\n";

//$theText = stripslashes($theText); (I don't know what this function does for me, but it doesn't seem to have any effect if I comment it out. Can someone tell me what it does?)

$data = fopen($filename, "r+"); 

fwrite($data,$theText); 

fclose($data);

echo "File Updated";
?>

Just in case, the HTML for my form is:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
.style1 {
	font-size: 36px;
	color: #FFFFFF;
}
.style2 {
	color: #FFFF00;
	font-weight: bold;
}
.style4 {color: #FFFF00; font-weight: bold; font-size: 18px; }
-->
</style></head>

<body bgcolor="#0099CC">
<div align="center">
  <p><strong><span class="style1">Update News</span></strong></p>
  <form name="form1" method="post" action="updatenews.php">
    <table width="640" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="0">
      <tr>
        <td width="296"><div align="right"><span class="style4">Date</span></div></td>
        <td width="314"><input name="date" type="text" id="date" value="MM/DD/YY"></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td valign="top"><div align="right">
          <p class="style4"><br>
            News Event </p>
        </div></td>
        <td><span class="style2">
          <textarea name="news" cols="40" rows="10" id="news">Type news event here</textarea>
        </span></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td colspan="2"><div align="center">
          <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
        </div></td>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
    <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    </p>
    <p class="style2">&nbsp;</p>
  </form>
  <p><strong></strong></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

If you want to understand better what the problem is, go to [deleted for security reasons] and fill out the form. Then go to http://www.wolfband.org/test.txt to see the changes. Thanks for any help.

paulnaj

1) Use ...

$data = fopen($filename, "a+"); // NOT r+

2) Try typing some single-quotes or some forward-slashes in your text box to find out what stripslashes() does!

Paul 🙂

trevorsg

I changed it from originally being a+ to r+ because I need the data to be written to the beginning of the text file. Is there a fix to the problem I was having before, or is there a workarond? Thanks.

Weedpacket

Changing the file mode doesn't change whether the data is appended to the start or the end of the file (no-one said it did). If you want to do that, you'll need to read the entire file, overwrite the file with the new data, and then append the stuff you read.

trevorsg

Well, I did try it with the a+ argument, and it DID append the text to the end of the file. When I used the r+ argument, the text was appended at the beginning, but it overwrote the old text that was already there.

But your method seems feasible. I am a beginner at PHP (seriously, I wrote my first script, phpinfo(); about two weeks ago), so I will post any more questions I have while trying to accomplish that.

Thanks for your help

-t

trevorsg

Ok, after some work, I finally figured it out:

<?
$filename = "file.txt";
$newcontent = "newsText=\r\n" . $_POST["date"] . ": " . $_POST["news"] . "\r\n"; //"newsText=" is to use this text file with Flash ActionScript
$data = fopen($filename, "r"); 
$oldcontent = fread($data, filesize("file.txt"));
$oldcontent = trim($oldcontent, "newsText=");
$towrite = $newcontent . $oldcontent;
$towrite = stripslashes($towrite);
$newfile = fopen($filename, "w+");
fwrite($newfile, $towrite);
fclose($data);
fclose($newfile);
echo "File Updated";
?>

I forgot about the "newsText=" variable definition for Flash ActionScript, so I had to add that to the $newcontent string and trim() it off the $oldcontent string. Thanks for all y'alls help.

-t

Swardh

try this. same thing but with less code.

<?php

$new = "newsText=\r\n" . $_POST["date"] . ": " . $_POST["news"] . "\r\n";

$file = "file.txt";
$old = trim(file_get_contents($file), "newsText=");
$savefile = fopen($file, "w");
fwrite($savefile, stripslashes($new . $old));
fclose($newfile);
echo "File Updated";

?>