[RESOLVED] strange directory behaviour

roseplant

I have a script that takes a variable, eg. elephant, and creates a directory structure in the form:

/public_html/animals/elephant
/public_html/animals/elephant/elephant_photos

And copies the files:

/public_html/animals/model/index.html /public_html/animals/elephant/index.html
/public_html/animals/model/model_photos/1.jpg /public_html/animals/elephant/elephant_photos/1.jpg
/public_html/animals/model/model_photos/2.jpg /public_html/animals/elephant/elephant_photos/2.jpg

The script has been working fine for a while now when it takes a single value from the form. But now I modified it so it takes an array of values from a TEXTAREA, and is supposed to iterate through them. Eg. a textarea could be filled as follows:

cow
rabbit
fox
squirrel

And the appropriate directory structure, etc. should be created for each.

But what happens is the LAST value (squirrel in this case) works ok, but the others create directories which are inaccessible via the web browser and even via FTP. I hope you understand. Here is the code I use:

interface.php

<h2>BULK Prepare Images</h2>

<form action="image_functions.php" method="POST">
<input type=hidden name='do' value='prepare_bulk'>
Input Values: <textarea name="h_name_bulk" type="text"></textarea>
<br><input type="submit">
</form>

image_functions.php

if ($do == 'prepare_bulk') {
	$lines = split("\n", $h_name_bulk);
	echo "<html>";
	for ($line_idx=0; $line_idx<count($lines); $line_idx++) {
		prepare_photo_filesystem($lines[$line_idx]);
		echo "Created filesystem for<br>$lines[$line_idx]<br>";
	}
	echo "</html>";
}

.
.
.

function prepare_photo_filesystem($this_h_name) {
	#copy relevant files needed for each variable's photo system


mkdir("$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/$this_h_name", 755);

copy("$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/model/photos/nophoto.jpg","$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/{$this_h_name}/photos/{$this_h_name}_1.jpg");
copy("$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/model/photos/nophoto.jpg","$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/{$this_h_name}/photos/{$this_h_name}_2.jpg");
       copy("$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/model/EXAMPLE_index.html","$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/$this_h_name/index.html");

}

I hope this makes sense. Don't worry about the filenames as I just changed them hastily and may have made a few mistakes (I'm obviously not using animals in the real application but for example only! 🙂 ).

devinemke

i suspect what is happening is that the strings you are using for the file/folder names still have the CR/LF character attached at the end thus making them unreadable by your FTP client. this would also makes sense as to why the last string in the list would not have a trailing CR/LF. you need to run each string thru [man]trim[/man] prior to feeding it to your function.

roseplant

Sounds like that could be it. I've modified the code to trim first, but now I need to delete the folders created previously (with the special characters). My FTP client won't handle them, and neither will the web host's online file manager.

devinemke

if you have shell access to your server then you log in and delete them from the command line. if not you can likely [man]unlink[/man] them. to make that easier you may want to look at phpshell.

roseplant

Thanks devinemke, I got it sorted. What I actually did to delete them was to modify the original script (without the trim) to unlink the directories rather than add them - a sneaky shortcut, I know 😉 . After that everything added just fine.