how to find some disk scratch space

[sneakyimp]

So I'm currently working on an image cropping tool and was wondering how one might find a TMP directory or other scratch space that PHP may use to create some temporary files. I did phpinfo() and found 'upload_tmp_dir' which in my case happens to have 'no value'.

Any ideas?

[NogDog]

If you are on a Linux/UNIX server, 99% of the time the "/tmp" directory is writable by all users. But then I can't think of any reason why you could not create a directory for this within your site's directory tree: it's the same disk (or at least the same logical disk) using the same read/write mechanisms in either case, and you don't have to worry about some system administrator complaining that you're hogging all of the /tmp space.

[halojoy]

there is no such tmp dir

I suppose php use the systems temp, for example: C:\WINDOWS\TEMP

but there is one directory you might use.
I have made a specific directory for session files:
session.save_path c:/sessions/tmp c:/sessions/tmp

you can run phpinfo(); to see what your php uses

function to get current

session_save_path

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

session_save_path — Get and/or set the current session save path

<?php

$ssdir = session_save_path();

$my_temp = $ssdir. '/scratch';
if( !is_dir($my_temp) ){
    $make = mkdir( $my_temp );
    if( !$make ){
        exit( 'could not create directory' );
    }
}

// use my scratch directory, $my_temp


?>

[sneakyimp]

Thanks guys.

I'd rather not appropriate the session save path and start working in there. When I try to work in my site's directory tree, I have to make sure the permissions are all set properly or things don't work. This is a bit of a problem when writing software that must be portable from server to server because you never know what the permissions might be on a given machine.

[halojoy]

sneakyimp wrote:

Thanks guys.

I'd rather not appropriate the session save path and start working in there. When I try to work in my site's directory tree, I have to make sure the permissions are all set properly or things don't work. This is a bit of a problem when writing software that must be portable from server to server because you never know what the permissions might be on a given machine.

yes,
you better create your own 'scratch' temporary work directory.

Unless I am mistaken, session save path is always write possible