File copying

Mickygor

Not been here in a while (years 🙁 ), but I've finally realised that I need a forum dedicated to PHP rather than asking on general forums. Anyway...

I've encountered a problem in what is the staple piece of code in the system I'm developing. I'm trying to essentially copy PHP files from one server to another. Here's the code I've got at the moment:

$modulef = fopen($path."module.inc.php", 'r');
			$module = '';
			while($line = fread($modulef, 1024)){

			$module .= $line;

		}

		$newfile = "/home/sites/modoerenuniverse.co.uk/public_html/new/modules/".$row['moduleDirectory'].".inc.php";

		touch($newfile);

		$fp = fopen($newfile, 'w');
		flock($fp, LOCK_EX);

		fwrite($fp, $module);

		flock($fp, LOCK_UN);
		fclose($fp);

Now I've tried both fread() and file_get_contents() and both functions have given me the same error - they process the file and read the output, instead of reading the source. My question is: how can I stop the file from being processed, and just read the underlying PHP code within the file? Or alternatively, is there some completely different way of copying the file itself?

jkurrle

Do you have FTP access between the servers? If so, I think you could use the cURL library to do file transfers then. Either that, or run a prebuilt shell script to ftp out to the other server and get the files...

Horizon88

Yeah, I'd recommend trying to use either FTP or a shell call instead, this is going to be sort of ... not good. 😃 I was going to suggest scp from command line but I'm not sure how you'd pass in authentication that way, so maybe check into the FTP functions.

Mickygor

I have both shell and FTP access between both sites, the script will be running on a shared account so that's no problem. Are there any security issues with using a method such as this? I'm intending on retailing webspace with this installed on it, and I don't really want people accessing things they shouldn't be...

Horizon88

There shouldn't be. Set up separate FTP accounts and then just write up a function that takes in their credentials and handles all the FTP stuff.

jkurrle

Something you can consider is googling for a chroot'ed jail. I have set one up, so that one of my clients can scp files into a certain directory, but cannot go anywhere else. It does require you to modify or replace your OpenSSL libraries though. Another alternative is an SCPOnly shell. You can google for that too.

Horizon88

From looking at his code it doesn't appear there would be any security issues at all just using PHP's built-in FTP functions. He's just copying a module across servers, from the looks of things - no dynamic paths or anything of the sort.