Hi everyone,

Iam a nuubie to PHP. I have faced some problems in my project. I want to access a server(folder in server) through script run by another server. Its possible to access the files kept in one server through script run by another server. Please anyone help me. Its very useful to me if anyone provide answer for this.

Thanku..
Mahe4us

Do you mean just a list of files? or will it need to include all the other methods for instance renaming files etc?

Hi Barnz,

Thanks you for your nice reply. I will tell clearly to you. suppose an image is placed in a folder in a different server. I want to access the image or copy the image from that server location to my server location dynamically. I think you can understand the above problem. Expecting your reply..
Thanks

hmmm, do you own the other server?

It may get tricky if you do cannot place a PHP script on the remote server (aswell as the local server etc).

However it may still be possible, but you may have to tell it which images to download etc.

If all you want is to copy an image you can do something like:

[PHP]$img_txt = file_get_contents('http://example.com/image.jpg');

$fp = fopen('/local/server/path/to/image/directory/', 'w');

fwrite($fp, $img_txt, strlen($img_txt));

fclose($fp);[/PHP]

But I believe what you want is a bit more than that.

What is really comes down to is what network you have in place between the two servers. If you just have HTTP then you'll have to access averything via HTTP with the HTTP stream functions: http://us2.php.net/stream

or you could use FTP.

You do not have any access to localserver functions on the remote server though unless you use something like SSH. (PHP can access an SSH stream and do what you want, but I don't the SSH protocol so I couldn't help you with that).

Ultimately if you own both server and wanted to write a php script that would act like an SSH for example, you'll be write a wrapper for functions you could do at the localhost, but have the commands sent over HTTP.

I believe thats what Barnz mentioned.

Its not too hard to do though. You can start off by looking at the phpshell project on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpterm/

It shouldn't be had to write a wrapper for executing commands on the remote server, the hard part would be to keep it secure.

Simple Example:

On your local server:

[php]// wrapper for calling remote php functions on the remote server
function remote_php_call($function, $arguments = false, $auth = false) {

$arguments = serialize($arguments);
$function = serialize($function);

$result = file_get_contents($remove_server.'?func='.$function.'&args='.$arguments.'&auth='.$auth);

return unserialize($result);

}
[/php]

On your remote server:

[php]
function remote_php_server($function, $arguments = false) {

$arguments = unserialize($arguments);
$function = unserialize($function);
$result = call_user_function($function, $arguments);

return serialize($result);

}

// first make sure you AUTHENTICATE the remote server,
// otherwise you open a door for everyone to run abitrary commands on your php server

$function = $_GET['function'];
$arguments = $_GET['arguments'];

echo remote_php_server($function, $arguments);

[/php]

Off course this will only be limited to data that can be serialized and sent over HTTP. ie: you cannot use a resource handlers from functions like fopen(), mysql etc.

Another option is to use one of the webservices such as XMLRPC, or SOAP etc. These have a well defined protocol..