fopen() issues? A little guidance here, please.

mrhinman

Here's the basic script:

function URLIsLive($URL)
{
return @fopen($URL, 'r');
}

$filename = "http://www.servenamehere.com/folder/" . $variable . ".pdf";
if (URLIsLive($filename))
{
echo "<a href=\"$filename\" target=\"_blank\">View File</a><br />";
}
else {}

If I use a remote server in $filename, the page hangs and never loads. If I eliminate the server name and just use

$filename = "folder/" . $variable . ".pdf";

it gets it no problems. Is there something I need to know here about fopen()? PHP version is 4.4.7.

--
Matthew

laserlight

Just to check
1. Are you testing with error_reporting = E_ALL and display_errors on? If not, change those settings in php.ini and test again.

Is allow_url_fopen enabled?

mrhinman

laserlight wrote:
Just to check
1. Are you testing with error_reporting = E_ALL and display_errors on? If not, change those settings in php.ini and test again.

Is allow_url_fopen enabled?

Unfortunately, I have no access to php.ini - I'll ask my provider and report back.

mrhinman

laserlight wrote:
Just to check
1. Are you testing with error_reporting = E_ALL and display_errors on? If not, change those settings in php.ini and test again.

Is allow_url_fopen enabled?

allow_url_fopen is ON.

error_reporting is set to 2039 and display_errors is ON.

mrhinman

I'm thinking it may have something to do with the file server. The file server where the PDFs are stored is a Windows box running Apache using WebServ. I am able to go to the site and view the folders, but not the PDFs. May be something on that end also. Any more ideas would be helpful.

mrhinman

Okay, it's not the server. It serves up the files just fine, albeit slowly. Hmmm.

mrhinman

Is there something better than fopen() to accomplish this? I can link all I want, but I need to know if it's a dead link or not.

Something using fsockopen? I've tried curl, but can't seem to get that to work. I just need to check if the file exists on the remote server, then display a link to it. ELSE {}.

mrhinman

So, does fopen() actually open the entire file? This may explain why getting them from a slower server is painfully slow.

What I'm aiming at is looking to another file server which stores scanned documents, PDFs, that are indexed according a numbering system for database data. The system needs to look at the other file server to see what scanned documents exists, then place a link for them. If no file exists, no link is displayed.

I'm thinking some kind of HEAD request? Or am I way off base here? FYI I'm running PHP 4.4.7 on the database machine and Apache on Windows on the remote machine.

fopen() is killing me. Literally MINUTES to load one request.