php display a file, driving me insane

xushi · 01-31-2005, 02:37 PM

Hi,

This is driving me insane. All i want to do is just display the contents of a file on a .php page.. But not messing up any indentation or anything.. (just like directly reading from the file)

I tried absolutely everything, but the closest i could ever get to is displaying everything in one line..

So far i have,

Code:

<?php
    $listFile = "Changelog";
    if (!($fp = fopen($listFile, "r")))  
        exit("Unable to open the input file, $listFile.");
    $buffer = fread($fp, filesize($listFile));  
    print "$buffer<br>\n";  
    fclose($fp);
?>

Which i managed to find online, but it still doesn't display the file properly.. I don't know what's wrong, please help.

Thanks

cmfarley19 · 01-31-2005, 03:11 PM

I know enough PHP & HTML to be slightly dangerous but I think your problem the fact that Browsers/HTML ignore whitespace.
So in HTML you can write:

Code:

<p>                        There is a lot of whitespace there!</p>

What you will see is:

Code:

 There is a lot of whitespace there!

With only one space. HTML ignore consectuive whitespace.
Oh...
Wait...
try pre & post -pending a <pre> tag.
Like so...

Code:

<pre>
<?php
    $listFile = "Changelog";
    if (!($fp = fopen($listFile, "r")))  
        exit("Unable to open the input file, $listFile.");
    $buffer = fread($fp, filesize($listFile));  
    print "$buffer<br>\n";  
    fclose($fp);
?> 
</pre>

That is sort of like the "[code]" tag used on this forum.

See what that does...

xushi · 01-31-2005, 03:17 PM

Genius

I wouldn't have guessed this without your help.. well, not for the next 3 nights. One annoying thing though.. The file contains some email addresses in the form of
<email@email.com>
, and they're not showing up at all ?! I'm guessing it's not liking the use of < >

cmfarley19 · 01-31-2005, 03:19 PM

Can you post some typical contents of the file?

xushi · 01-31-2005, 03:46 PM

Code:

......
		skipped AAlib 1.4rc5 (needs Xorg, GPM)
		skipped Imlib2 (needs Xorg)

2005-01-29   <root@xushitop.xushi.co.uk>

	* xushi: Started on Security
		OpenSSL 0.9.7e
		cracklib 2.7
		Linux-PAM 0.78
		Shadow 4.0.4.1 (Reinstalled patching 
			to fix linking against PAM)
		iptables 1.2.11
		skipped iptables for now
		GnuPG 1.4.0
		skiped Tripwire-portable 0.9 (libexec error)
.........

It would display everything, except for <root@xushitop.xushi.co.uk>

cmfarley19 · 01-31-2005, 04:03 PM

OK...
If you do a "View source of your PHP page you'll see the address is there but the angle brakcets make it look like a tag to the browser.
Strip out the brackets and your're in business...

Code:

<pre>
<?php
    $listFile = "data.txt";
    if (!($fp = fopen($listFile, "r")))
        exit("Unable to open the input file, $listFile.");
    $buffer = fread($fp, filesize($listFile));            
    $gtlt = array("<", ">");
    $buffer = str_replace($gtlt, "", $buffer);                       
    print "$buffer<br>\n";
    fclose($fp);
?>
</pre>

Cheers!

deiussum · 01-31-2005, 04:06 PM

If you have no HTML at all being displayed for the page and it is all a plain text file, you also might try putting this at the top:

<?header("Content-Type:text/plain");?>

Otherwise, you might have to replace all instances of < with < and > with > using something like str_replace.

xushi · 01-31-2005, 04:08 PM

I don't mind that at all.

Again, thank you for your help cmfarley19, deiussum

pnellesen · 01-31-2005, 05:09 PM

Quick question: Is there a reason you wouldn't simply use an "include('$filename')" command? Just curious - I use this alot to spit out chunks of HTML on a web page; I assume you're wanting to do the same thing?

Apologies if I've not understood what you're trying to do

xushi · 01-31-2005, 05:24 PM

pnellesen, deiussum, I followed the above code because i've never programmed php before.

All i need to do is this. I have a changelog in a text file, which i want to display to the users. So instead of just displaying dull text from a textfile, say
mysite.com/file.txt
i want to stick it in an html file, surround it with a frame, make it look sexier..

So far, the php code above works. However, if you all think there are better ways in doing so, i'm open for suggestions.

keefaz · 01-31-2005, 05:40 PM

There is htmlentities() to encode special chars, like

PHP Code:



<pre> 
<?php echo htmlentities(file_get_contents("Changelog", 1)); ?> 
</pre>

cmfarley19 · 02-01-2005, 07:04 AM

Xushi,
I forgot about the htmlentities() function that keefaz suggests.
I think this is a cleaner version of what you already have:

Code:

<?php
    $listFile = "data.txt";
    if (!($fp = fopen($listFile, "r")))
        exit("Unable to open the input file, $listFile.");
    $buffer = fread($fp, filesize($listFile));
    $buffer = htmlentities($buffer);
    print "$buffer<br>\n";
    fclose($fp);
?>

xushi · 02-01-2005, 06:22 PM

Thank you,

I've added <pre> </pre> to the code above, and it works nicely.

While i still have the interest of some talented programmers

Is there a way i can increase the font size of the output, without interfearing with the original text file?

And mind you, this probably is the last question i'll ask for now

I meen, take a base php file of

Code:

<body>
  <pre>
  <?php
    $listFile = "Changelog";
    if (!($fp = fopen($listFile, "r")))
        exit("Unable to open the input file, $listFile.");
    $buffer = fread($fp, filesize($listFile));
    $buffer = htmlentities($buffer);
    print "$buffer<br>\n";
    fclose($fp);
?>
</pre>
</body>

If i change it to,

Code:

<body> <font size="3" face="Verdana" class="text"><span class="style1"> <pre>
  <?php
    $listFile = "Changelog";
    if (!($fp = fopen($listFile, "r")))
        exit("Unable to open the input file, $listFile.");
    $buffer = fread($fp, filesize($listFile));
    $buffer = htmlentities($buffer);
    print "$buffer<br>\n";
    fclose($fp);
?>
</pre> </font> </body>

It would still display the resulting output the same original size it is in.

keefaz · 02-02-2005, 03:44 AM

add a css style :

Code:

pre { font-size: 18px; }

or in the <pre> markup like :

Code:

<pre style="font-size: 18px">
...
</pre>

Also why not use file_get_contents() instead of fopen, fread, fclose... seem quicker to me

xushi · 02-02-2005, 04:08 AM

Thanks, that worked.

Well, i know what to read about now. I should look into .css scripting, and a bit of php too.