I am looking to write a script which will download a file from a remote server and save it on my server (with hosting company).

I'm looking to setup a cron job which will automatically run everyday at 3am and basically update a file on my server. For example:

Remote Server: Contains file.htm -> Dated June 23, 2006

My Server: Contains file.htm -> Dated June 22, 2006 (out of date)


I want the cron job to download file.htm from the remote server and save it (overwriting) file.htm on my server.

Can someone show me how to do this. I have tried searching for it on google but NO LUCK!

This should get another file and write it to your file when run.
I haven't tested it or anything i wrote it off the top of my head..

PHP Code:

<?php 
$contents = file_get_contents('http://url/to/the/file.ext'); //get file
$file = "file.htm"; // file to write to
$openfile = fopen("$file","w+"); // open and truncate file
fwrite($openfile,"$contents");  // write to file
fclose($openfile);  // close the file
?>

thank you... Everything worked perfectly!

stOx, I was reading this post out of curiosity, I tried your script out to grab a .jpg file of a radar image. Works great! Thanks for posting it. Talkupation for you.

Does it work around htaccess hot linking ?

Ibbo

I just pointed the script to the .jpg file url and renamed a few things and it works like a charm.

Yes this method is a workaround for hotlinking

Read in the img contents and spit out the relevant headers then echo the img to screen. Its not adering to the htaccess hotlink prevention.

So htaccess hotlinking prevent direct (img src="") calls but you can alsways grab the image contents and spit them out.

Not that I am into hotlinking or what have you, just nice to know work arounds for everything.

Ibbo

I just used the script to bring the file to my server then used <img src=""> and pointed it to my file. I see what you are talking about though.

What exactly is htaccess hotlinking?

htaccess can prevent other people from hijacking your bandwith by (HOTLINKING) linking to your images. htaccess can issue a different image stating your nicking other peoples images or it simply prevents the image been accessed resulting in a broken image.

Ibbo

Definition of Hotlinking
posted from: http://www.free-webhosts.com/definition/hotlinking.php

"Hotlinking" (also called "hot linking", "leeching", and "bandwidth theft") is a term referring to when a web page of one website owner is direct linking to the images or other multimedia files on the web host of another website owner (usually without permission, thus stealing bandwidth). This not only causes the other person to pay for the bandwidth of the hotlinked file, but often is intellectual property theft. The term is also used loosely (a misnomer) by free image hosts which allow you to store images on their server and allow you to direct link the hosted image files on forums or other websites (sometimes altering the image to have a watermark). One of the most common occurrences of "hot linking" is when people are forum posting and they hotlink pictures from another website to use as avatars or signature images on the messageboards (forums). Some disadvantages of hot linking worth considering are that the webpage generally loads slower when you link to images stored on a different web hosting server than the webpage is hosted on, and the owner of the image has full control to disable hotlinking, or delete, rename, or worse yet, do a "switcheroo" (i.e., switching the file name to be another image which is sure to cause the hotlinker embarrassment) of the hot-linked image. Common methods of preventing hotlinking are by using an .htaccess file, using the "Hotlink Protection" offered in control panels such as Cpanel, or simply renaming image files periodically.

I dont believe that what i am doing is hotlinking. I am simply copying the image over to my server. I <img src="file.jpg"> and point it to my copied img file. So I am hosting the img. Is that wrong? If so I will take it down.

In my opinion its not wrong. I mean you could be directly linking to the image file, @ least this way you're only getting the image information once per day (maybe less) instead of each time someone views your page.

I agree if your grabbing the image just the once, but if you do a grab like that each time its requesrted then I suppose it could be seen as hotlinking (or certainly bandwidth theft).

Ibbo

Heres a small tutorial i wrote on How to prevent hotlinking if anyone is interested.

For the most part hotlinking doesn't bother me too much, If someone posts an image from my server on a forum i don't mind. But if they use my images for thier site theme and are stealing bandwidth then i usually take action.

There is definately something wrong with hotlinking.

Can this script be used to read contents of a .php file ?

No it can't. Why would they make it possible to read the contents of a php file? It would make security nonexistant..