What aspects of PHP would i need to know to write a script that does...

samsunnyuk

Hi,
I need to write a script that allows the user to input text, submit that text to a .txt file and have the contents of that text file displayed on a web page.

So far I have learnt the basic php syntax, variables, and "if else". Could someone tell me what other PHP instructions I need to learn to write this script?

Thanks

Houdini

Write a form with a textarea input and name of the input as whatever you want to call it, then submit the form to a php processing file which presents it from the input after a little cleaning of the input.

samsunnyuk

hmm from that ive worked out i need to learn File Processing: Writing to a file, but what instruction type is it to show the contents of a .txt file?

Houdini

OK what I will do is show you a very simple example that will wordwrap the text entered into a textarea first make this code as html for a form.

<html>
   <head> 
      <title>Test My PHP</title>
   </head>
   <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#800080" alink="#FF0000">
<form name ="myform" action="phpprocess.php" method="post">
<textarea name ="message" cols="80" rows="20"></textarea>
<input type=submit value="Enter Message">
</form>
   </body>
</html>

Then you use this simple php code to process the form notice that in the HTML form it is calleed phpprocess,php so you must name this that name or change the name of the file in the action = in the HTML form shown above. The below is a PHP file

<?php
echo wordwrap($_POST['message']); 
 ?>

Then run the code after saving both those pages or files to a web server and play around with it, it is as simple as that.

samsunnyuk

ok that has helped thanks

Weedpacket

samsunyuk wrote:
what instruction type is it to show the contents of a .txt file?

That's two instructions: first you read the file (which is of course a file function), then you display what you read (that echo thing Houdini mentioned).

samsunnyuk

cant i use the readfile function?

[FONT=Courier New]<?
readfile( "file/path/test.txt" );
?> [/FONT]

TF_TheMoon

<?php
$contents = file_get_contents( "file/path/test.txt");
?>

http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php

samsunnyuk

i dont need to assign the .txt file contents to a variable though, so cant i just use the readfile command? i only want to display the contents of the .txt file on another page..

Weedpacket

Could you try it and see?

samsunnyuk

yeah ive tried it and it works, just thought it might be "unprofessional" or something..