Can PHP copy output to a new (permanent) file?

[marcyjo]

I am reasonably certain this can be done but there's something about the concept that I'm missing.

I have a form into which data is entered and when the magic button is pressed, an action/output page is generated. That's exactly what I want to happen, but I need to complicate things a little bit.

Instead of just displaying the output on action.php - which makes the results only viewable by whoever submitted it - I want the output to be written to a new, saved file. In other words, if the user specifies that the file should be called bacon.html, I want the action.php to create bacon.html, copy its own contents to the new bacon.html file and include the data that was submitted by the user.

If that is possible, I'm guessing it's also possible to take it a step further and specify where the new file should be located. What I mean by this is, if the form asks the user what directory the file should be in, the user enters "meat" and tells the form to name the file "bacon.html", thereby resulting in a new file being created: /meat/bacon.html (If the directory "meat" doesn't exist, I want the script to create it).

Am I making sense? Can this be accomplished? Is there more information I need to provide? Thanks in advance for any insight y'all can provide. (:

[laserlight]

Yes, it certainly is possible, but before you jump to do it: are you sure that you might not be looking to use a database management system?

[marcyjo]

Not entirely sure, but that might be overkill. Basically here's the purpose:

I have a couple friends who don't even really know HTML. They get these little HTML tag snippets (alà those stupid "hey, want to post this to your livejournal? copy here!") type snippets. They want to be able to put them onto a page. So basically, I want them to be able to say something like this:

Oh hai, webzform! I can haz page wif my lolcats to send to mai momz?

So they enter their name into the form, along with what it is they're posting, give it a filename, tell it where to store it, and presto - a page they can send to mom, who will then (obviously) forward it to 900 of her closest AOL buddies.

This isn't going to see a ton of use, and it's not meant to even be scalable. I'm just trying to find a way that I don't have to pretend I'm not annoyed when they say "oh hey, could you throw this up on a website for me? You know, make it look nice and stuff?". :glare:

[johanafm]

http://se2.php.net/manual/en/function.file-put-contents.php

[marcyjo]

Thanks heaps! I'll pore through this and see what I can do. (: