Question

I’m attempting to check for file existence with Zend Framework and, if the file doesn’t exist, have it be created. Here’s the code being used:

$filename = "/assessmentsFile/rubrics/$rubricID.php";
$somecontent = "test";

if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'w+')) {
    echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
    exit;
}

// Write $somecontent to our opened file.
if (fwrite($handle, $somecontent) === false) {
   echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
   exit;
}

However, I assume due to Zend’s way of handling file structure, if a file doesn’t exist it just spits out:

Warning: fopen(/assessmentsFile/rubrics/1.php) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory

Because the fopen function isn’t working, fwrite is unable to write the file.

Is there another way of doing this?

Answer 1

Most likely the issue is with the path to $filename.

You have

$filename = "/assessmentsFile/rubrics/$rubricID.php";

which tries to create a file in the root of the server in a directory called assessmentsFile.

Most likely you need to be using:

$filename = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/assessmentsFile/rubrics/$rubricID.php";

$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] should do the trick if the assessmentsFile folder is in your web root. Otherwise there are other variables you can use to get a fully qualified path, or you can simply hard-code the path:

$filename = "/home/yoursite/public_html/assessmentsFile/rubrics/$rubricID.php";