Dynamic HTML files not working

Davidc316

Hi,

I've created a script that automatically generates php files (webpages). The script is part of a content management system.

It's working well offline. All files are being created and behaving as they should.

However, when I run the thing online and then go to the php pages that have been created, I get a white screen and the PHP doesn't seem to work at all. Bizzarly, if I download the php file that has been dynamically created and then upload it again (no tweaks required) then everything works perfectly.

Can anyone offer any help or advice?

Many thanks!

bradgrafelman

Sounds like a permissions problem or perhaps an encoding issue (which is being translated by your FTP client, unless you're uploading/downloading in BINARY and not ASCII mode).

What are the permissions of the files that are automatically created vs. the ones that you upload?

Davidc316

Hi,

Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

Both the files that are being created and the files I'm uploaded have permissions of 644.

The source code of the files that are being created is fine. Indeed, that code only has about three lines of very simple PHP. I can't understand why it's not working unless I download then reupload the file.

bradgrafelman

You said that you get nothing but a "white screen" when you view the automatically-created PHP files. What does the actual source of the page look like (e.g. what was the actual data that the webserver sent back, rather than just looking at whatever rendered junk your browser tried to show you)?

Also, do you have error logging enabled (hint: the answer should be "yes" 🙂) and error_reporting set to E_ALL? If so, have you checked your PHP log for errors?

Davidc316

Hi,

When I look at the actual files that are being created I can see a few lines of simple, clean PHP code. It looks something like this:

<?php
$pageid=15;
include("webpage.php");
?>

When I try to view the page on the browser I get a white screen.

I'm unable to access any error logs right now.

bradgrafelman

Davidc316 wrote:
When I try to view the page on the browser I get a white screen.

Ignore what your browser is rendering. What is the actual response sent from the server (e.g. view the source of the page, don't just view the page as shown by your browser)?

Davidc316 wrote:
I'm unable to access any error logs right now.

It might come down to looking at those. If you have log_errors set to On and error_reporting set to E_ALL, and the PHP parser is truly being invoked on these problematic files, you should see something in the error logs that might suggest what's going wrong.