permission denied error

tams

Hi everyone,

I am trying to write some information from mysql to a word doc but I get the following error message

Warning: fopen(contract.doc) function.fopen: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/word.php on line 20 
Error saving file!

The word document is a contract in which the information retrieved from mysql will fill in the blank form spaces. The document is read only with permission to only write in the form spaces.

Here is the php code for writing into the document

<?php
ob_start();

/* Program: retrieve.php*/


include("long.inc"); 




{}                                       

$cxn = mysqli_connect($host, $user,$passwd,$dbname) 

        or die ("Couldn't connect to server.");		

	$query = "SELECT firstname,lastname,address,startdate,enddate,salary,contractlocation,managingsection,jobtitle FROM personalinfo WHERE familyname='$_POST[familyname]' AND firstname='$_POST[firstname]'";                
	$result = mysqli_query($cxn, $query);

	$tab = "\t";
	$cr = "\n";
	$data = $firstname.$lastname . $tab . $address . $tab . $startdate . $tab . $startdate . $tab . $enddate . $tab . $salary . $tab . $contractlocation . $tab . $jobtitle . $tab . $startdate . $tab . $enddate . $tab . $managingsection . $cr;

	$fp = fopen("contract.doc","a"); // $fp is now the file pointer to file $filename
	if($fp){
			fwrite($fp,$data);    // Write information to the file
			fclose($fp);        // Close the file
			echo "File saved successfully";
	} else {
			echo "Error saving file!";
	}

	header("Content-type: application/x-msdownload");
	header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Contract.doc");
	header("Pragma: no-cache");
	header("Expires: 0");

?>

Thank you in advance

etully

I think you're mixing up permission to write to the file and permission to write to fields. If the file itself is read only, PHP doesn't care if some of the fields inside the file are writeable by MS Word.

I suspect that this contract is a template that you don't want to alter. (That is, you want the template to always stay unchanged). So it's good that you have the file read only.

I think what you want to do is $fp = fopen("contract.doc","r");

Then read in the contents of the template into a variable. Then alter the variable as much as you want (populate the fields in the template) and then save (write) the contents of the variable to a brand new file (or store in a database, or print it out on a printer, or email it, or print it to the screen).

This way, the template file will still be blank for the next time you want to use it. If you actually wrote to the template, then it would have data in it and it would be useless as a template next time.

tams

I see exactly what you mean but how would I write the contents of the document into a variable? Could you give some hints in php code?

thank you for replying

etully

Typically, when you read in the template, you have some sort of code showing where the fields go. For example, you might have this in your doc file:

Dear <name>,
    This is a legally binding contract between us and you (<name>).  As of today, <date>, you will make your home at <address> available for sale.

When you read the contents of the file into a variable called $content or something, then you simply want to replace all instances of <name> with whatever variable you were going to populate into that field. For example, if you were going to put the PHP variable $name into that field, you could use a PHP command like this:

$content = ereg_replace("<name>",$name,$content);

This will replace ALL instances of <name> with $name. That way, you can put <name> as many times in the DOC file as you want, wherever you want.

Since you are saying $content = , you are taking the old version of $content, making the replacement, and storing the new version in the variable $content.

Once you have made all the replacements, then you can do whatever you want with $content (save, store, print, display on screen, email it, whatever). And since you would be writing $content to a new file, the original DOC file doesn't get changed so it's ready to use for the next contract. That's why the DOC file can (or should) be read only.

tams

Ok so I changed my code around and now I get a totally different error.

Parse error : syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/word.php on line 24

Other than that my code seems wrong to me so if you can comment on that too.

<?php
ob_start();

/* Program: retrieve.php*/


include("long.inc"); 




{}                                       

$cxn = mysqli_connect($host, $user,$passwd,$dbname) 

        or die ("Couldn't connect to server.");		

	$query = "SELECT firstname,lastname,address,startdate,enddate,salary,contractlocation,managingsection,jobtitle FROM personalinfo WHERE familyname='$_POST[familyname]' AND firstname='$_POST[firstname]'";                
	$result = mysqli_query($cxn, $query);


	$fp = fopen("contract.doc","r"); // $fp is now the file pointer to file $filename
	$content = $fp


	$content = ereg_replace("<name>",$firsntname,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<name>",$lastname,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<address>",$firsntname,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<startdate>",$startdate,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<startdate>",$startdate,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<enddate>",$enddate,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<jobtitle>",$jobtitle,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<salary>",$salary,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<contractlocation>",$contractlocation,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<jobtitle>",$jobtitle,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<startdate>",$startdate,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<enddate>",$enddate,$content);
	$content .= ereg_replace("<managingsection>",$managingsection,$content);

	echo $content;

	header("Content-type: application/x-msdownload");
	header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Contract.doc");
	header("Pragma: no-cache");
	header("Expires: 0");
fclose($fp);

?>

Sorry for my ignorance and thanks in advance

etully

Line 23:

    $content = $fp

Add a semicolon to the end. That will fix the error at hand.

Why do you have {} written in your code? What is that supposed to do?

Lastly, why are you echo'ing the $content before printing the headers? Typically, you put out the headers first, and then the content.

etully

Oh. And you don't want to say $content .=

That means: Take the current value of $content and add this thing to the end.

But the ereg_replace commands will give you the entire value of $content with the replacements.

For example, consider this code:

$x = "today is a good day to write PHP code";
$x = ereg_replace("good","lousy",$x);
echo $x;

That will display: today is a lousy day to write PHP code

So then consider this code:

$x = "today is a good day to write PHP code";
$x = ereg_replace("good","lousy",$x);
$x = ereg_replace("write","create",$x);
echo $x;

That will display: today is a lousy day to create PHP code

But if you use .= you will ADD THE VALUE OF $X to the END OF $X like this:

$x = "today is a good day to write PHP code";
$x = ereg_replace("good","lousy",$x);
$x .= ereg_replace("write","create",$x);
echo $x;

today is a lousy day to write PHP codetoday is a lousy day to create PHP code

It's taking $x, replacing write with create, and then adding that onto the end of the old value of $x (and notice that the old value of $x still had write instead of create).

tams

so I made the changes and now the code looks like this

<?php
ob_start();

/* Program: retrieve.php*/


include("long.inc"); 






$cxn = mysqli_connect($host, $user,$passwd,$dbname) 

        or die ("Couldn't connect to server.");		

	$query = "SELECT firstname,lastname,address,startdate,enddate,salary,contractlocation,managingsection,jobtitle FROM personalinfo WHERE familyname='$_POST[familyname]' AND firstname='$_POST[firstname]'";                
	$result = mysqli_query($cxn, $query);


	$fp = fopen("contract.doc","r");
	$content = $fp;


	$content = ereg_replace("<name>",$firsntname,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<name>",$lastname,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<address>",$firsntname,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<startdate>",$startdate,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<startdate>",$startdate,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<enddate>",$enddate,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<jobtitle>",$jobtitle,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<salary>",$salary,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<contractlocation>",$contractlocation,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<jobtitle>",$jobtitle,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<startdate>",$startdate,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<enddate>",$enddate,$content);
	$content = ereg_replace("<managingsection>",$managingsection,$content);



	header("Content-type: application/x-msdownload");
	header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Contract.doc");
	header("Pragma: no-cache");
	header("Expires: 0");

	echo $content;
	fclose($fp);

?>

But now the only thing it displays is "Rescource id#4" which is nowhere on the readonly file. any ideas on why this happens?

thank you

etully

Oh, heh. I didn't notice those lines.

First of all, when you say $fp = fopen("contract.doc","r");
You're not actually getting the contents of the file. Instead, $fp is a handle. It's a sort of a link. I guess some people might call it a resource. It's a behind the scenes connector to the file.

So you can't actually print $fp - it's not a string of content.

What you actually do is use $fp as your method of communicating with the file to read the data out of the file. So replace this line:

    $fp = fopen("contract.doc","r");

with this:

$fp = fopen("contract.doc","r"); 
$content = "";
while (!feof($fp)) { $content .= fread($fp, 8192); }
fclose($fp);

That will open the file and read the contents out of the file into the $content variable.

The second thing is that .DOC files aren't simple text files and reading from them isn't always trivial. What I would do is cut and paste all the text out of contract.doc and paste it into a simple text file called contract.txt

When I originally read your post, I assumed that you had some special code for reading .DOC files but now I see that you are treating them as text files and that's probably not going to work.

tams

Thank you, that fixed it but it seems doing this will be hassle because the person who will use the form will have to format it and that will probably take more time than filling in the blank fields in a read only file. I guess I will just talk about that with my boss and see if he still wants me to go with this. Thanks a million for your help.

etully

Aww, man, don't give up on it just yet, you're so close!

To maintain the formatting, you need to ask yourself what the final product is going to be. Do you want a formatted web page? A .doc file? A PDF? A printed page? An email? I'm not sure which direction you're trying to go but depending on what the final product has to be, you have a lot of ways to control the formatting.

Choosing the output format will depend on who the users of the web site are going to be. Employees of your company? The general public? The same five people over and over or thousands of different people (with completely different platforms)? What are they going to do with it? Just print it? Or save the doc on their machine for future reference?

tams

Well the employees from HR are going to be using this and the will need in .doc format.
If there is some way to preserve the formatting that would be great.

Thank you

etully

Doc format is tricky. I did find this page which seem promising but didn't try it:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.php/msg/83f3b19805b5d2a

Google for "create doc file php".

Also, consider making HTML and saving as doc file. There are a number of people on the Internet who say that works but I've never tried it.

Alternately, you could use fpdf to make a PDF.

tams

Thank you, I will look at that and all the results from google. And if I have further problems, I will get back to you😉