Writing files - PHP loses input from text area

bencooke

Hi,

Ive a bit of a nasty problem ive just discovered on a project and its getting a bit critical.

I have some code which converts text from a html text area to html and writes it to a new file using php.

I thought all was well and good but ive just discovered that PHP seems to be picking and choosing what it writes and seldom writes all of the content of the text area - often cutting it off and only writing a small portion of it.

Does anyone know what could be wrong?

some code is below:

function processField($processThis){

$processThis = stripslashes($processThis);
$processThis = strip_tags($processThis);
$processThis = htmlentities($processThis, ENT_QUOTES); 

return $processThis;
}

function processStoryField($myStoryText){

$myStoryText = processField($myStoryText);

#start paragraph tag
$myStoryText = "<p>".$myStoryText;

#replace any \r\n characters with paragraph tags
$myStoryText = str_replace("\r\n\r\n", "\r\n", $myStoryText);
$myStoryText = str_replace("\r\n", "</p>\r\n<p>", $myStoryText);

#close last paragraph
$myStoryText = $myStoryText."</p>";

return $myStoryText;
}

$storyText = $_POST['storyText'];
$storyText = processStoryField($storyText);

#echo ("filepath = ".$filepath);
$fh = fopen($filepath,"w");

#save story body in it and close

fwrite($fh,$storyText);
fclose($fh);

I'd appreciate some help on this. Cheers,

Ben

etully

I've seen this symptom many times. Before digging into your PHP code, let me check the most likely culprit: In your HTML form, you should be using method="post" which allows roughly 40K of data (depending on the web browser). Don't use the get method which only allows about 1K of data. This is why the code often works when we test it but then fails when the client really uses it. If that's not the problem, then I'll take a look at your code.

Installer

Since you say the code worked okay before, I've a hunch etully is right. Otherwise post (or link to) some text that gets screwed-up, because the code looks alright to me.

bencooke

Basically the code seems to give up the goat anywhere in the middle of the text ive copied into the box. There's an example below.

Each file thats been saved is around 2 - 3KB.

The data from the box is input in a text box and passed to a confirm/preview page using post where the user can accept the text or go back to edit it.

This is all a bit weird.

<p>A funny thing happened in May 2003; sales of laptop computers outpaced desktop computers for the first time, accounting for 54 percent of computer sales that month, according to an Associated Press article published in USA Today that July.</p>
<p>An even funnier thing happened in May of 2005: Laptop computers outsold desktop computers for the first time ... again. That was according to an Associated Press story that ran in USA Today last June with almost the same headline.</p>
<p>Whenever it first happened, it seems clear that laptop computers are now the American public&#039;s preferred tool for data crunching, word processing, internet surfing, music/photo storing and organizing, and movie editing. We use the portable machines for everything from watching movies to preparing business presentations to doing math homework.</p>
<p>This is due to three major trends: First, laptops have become more advanced, and the technology they contain finally rivals that offered by desktop PCs. Second, laptops have become dramatically cheaper over the past few years. Companies such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard are currently offering models for around $500, with rebates. But the third and probably most important reason laptops have been selling so well is the remarkable spread of wireless technology. Airports, hotels, coffee shops, college campuses, convention centers and almost anywhere business takes place or people simply have to stop and think, Wi-Fi is there.</p>
<p>And other high-speed services are spreading. Cellular service providers now sell broadband wireless technologies such as Evolution-Data Optimized, or EV-DO -- a wireless radio broadband data standard adapted for code division multiple access, or CDMA, cell-phone providers -- and Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution, or EDGE, which promises higher data-transfer speeds over its networks. These allow anyone to convert a laptop into an always-connected-almost-anywhere device with an expansion card/antenna. And even more powerful wireless technologies are coming.</p>
<p>As always, with increased sales come increased product differentiation and choice. There have traditionally been three segments of notebook PCs (that&#039;s what the industry insists upon calling laptops): ultra-portables, desktop replacements and the </p>

etully

I just ran your script on my machine and your sample text was written to a file in its entirety. For testing purposes, don't pass in storyText from a web form but instead, assign it to a variable. For example:

$a = "blah blah blah";
(but make it a lot longer than this. Maybe 10, 40, or even 80K of text).

Then, in your script, change: $storyText = $_POST['storyText'];
to: $storyText = $a;

Then run the script and see if it saves the text without truncating it. If it works, then you will know that the problem has nothing to do with your PHP script - you will know that it's getting truncated on the trip from the browser to the script.

Alternately, you could comment out the line that reads:
$storyText = processStoryField($storyText);

This way, you will be writing EXACTLY what gets received from the browser rather than wondering whether the browser or your processing functiions are responsible for cutting off the text.

bencooke

Thank you very much for your help.

I eventually realised that my hidden fields which contain the original input text while the user goes through various confirmations and options did have any functions to sort out double quotes. This meant that the code was cutting stories at the first double quote mark it saw.

Ive now sorted it and can get on with my project :-)

Thanks again, I really appreciated your pointers