Question

I have a php file that I want to add an include path to on the second line. I need to open the file and inset a line of code on line 2.

I have tried a few techniques none of which are working but I think it has something to do with the text I am trying to write and possibly not escaping character correctly as I am not too familiar with file writing.

So here is the file I want to write to:

$file = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/'.$domaindir.'/test.php';

Here is the piece of text I want to insert into the file:

$dbfile = "include('".$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/".$domaindir."/web_".$dbname.".inc.php');";

Then what I was doing was a string replace but all it did was bump the “session_start();” bit to a newline!

Can anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial that might tell me how to insert this into the second line of my php file or indeed if anyone has any ideas?

I can say for sure that the path to the PHP file is fully tested so i know its not that the file is not being open or written to.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

After wholly agreeing with zerkms – PHP file modification is a Bad Idea – you do not need replacements to do this.

Just read the file in with file(), which places your PHP file in a convenient array. Then you may splice the array, or possibly:

$file       = file('yourfile.php');

$first_line = array_shift($file);       // Remove first line and save it
array_unshift($file, $yourSecondLine);  // push second line
array_unshift($file, $first_line);      // Save back the first line

$fp = fopen('yourfile.php', 'w');       // Reopen the file
fwrite($fp, implode("\n", $file));     
fclose($fp);

Check file permissions after you have done this. They might have become more relaxed (or less. If you run this from command line as root recursively on a web tree, with most Apache installations you will find yourself with a unusable web site since Apache will no longer be able to access files that are now born-again superuser files).