PHP Script Won't Create File on XAMPP

Question

I am trying to get a PHP script to take input from an html form to create a csv file. My PHP script is below:

<?php
    $fname = $_POST['fname'];
    $lname = $_POST['lname'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    $row = [$fname, $lname, $email];
    $file = fopen("mini4.csv", 'w');
    for ($i=0; $i<3; $i++){
        fwrite($file, $row[$i]);
        if($i!=2){
            fwrite($file, ", ");
        }
    }
    fclose($file);
    $file = fopen("mini4.csv", "r");
    $data = fgetcsv($file);
    echo file_get_contents( "data.csv" );
    fclose($file);
    ?>

My PHP file has the following permissions : -rw-r--r--. The directory the PHP file is held in has the following permissions: drwxr-xr-x.

From everything I've read, issues like this are due to permissions, although, looking at other posts my permissions on the PHP file and directory above it are correct.

I saw some answers suggesting chmod -R 777 to the directory, but I am worried about potential security issues this might cause.

When I look at the access log on XAMPP, i see the following:

::1 - - [27/Feb/2022:17:23:14 -0500] "POST /mini4/mini4.php HTTP/1.1" 500 -

I turned on screen reporting and I am getting this:

Warning: fopen(mini4.csv): Failed to open stream: Permission denied in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/mini4/mini4.php on line 12.

Although, I do not see how this can be given the permissions my file and directory have.

How do you know the 500 error is definitely caused by permissions? Have you actually either a) looked in your PHP error log file, if you have one, or b) turned on on-screen PHP error reporting? That way you'll see the precise error message and have a much better idea what to do. — ADyson
– ADyson, Commented Feb 27, 2022 at 22:48
Side note: It would be less verbose to use fputcsv to write the data. — ADyson
– ADyson, Commented Feb 27, 2022 at 22:57
I turned on screen reporting and I am getting this:Warning: fopen(mini4.csv): Failed to open stream: Permission denied in /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs/mini4/mini4.php on line 12. Although, I do not see how this can be given the permissions my file and directory have. — rochimer
– rochimer, Commented Feb 27, 2022 at 23:50
File system permissions are more complex than that. Files and directories have users and groups and many Linux distros have additional security modules such as SELinux or AppArmor. — Álvaro González
– Álvaro González, Commented Feb 28, 2022 at 9:03

Tangentially Perpendicular · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-28 01:03:52Z

1

The permissions assigned to your PHP file are irrelevant. The permissions assigned to the folder your PHP script is trying to write to are important because they must grant read/write access to the user that Apache is using. Typically, that's the user/group apache:apache and that's different from the user you'll be logged in as.

Mostly it's enough to chmod g+rw <myFolder>, but this depends on the existing setup.

FWIW, your code is inordinately convoluted. You could just do this:

$file = fopen("mini4.csv", 'w');
fputcsv($file, [$_POST['fname'], $_POST['lname'], $_POST['email']]);
fclose($file);
readfile("mini4.csv");

Be aware that this need additional validation before using it in anger.

answered Feb 28, 2022 at 1:03

Tangentially Perpendicular

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