file locking help

[iostream71]

i have a guestbook flash animation that reads and writes to a text file via php script

my problem is, if i do a write to the text file, sometimes the flash movie reads the text file before it's written to(when you post a message, it writes to the file, them reads it)

is there any way i can lock the file to prevent reading until the write is completed?

 

[sleipnir214]

Your flash app is submitting data to a PHP script, which then appends the new text to the file, then returns the new total file, right? ______________________________________________________________________
Perfection in engineering does not happen when there is nothing more to add.
Rather it happens when there is nothing more to take away.

 

[iostream71]

well, it basically takes the old posts, splits them up into separate posts(an array), then writes back the last 10 to the same file. hope that makes sense

 

[sleipnir214]

Okay. But the same script accepts the input, edits the file, then returns the postings right?

I mean your Flash script does not hit one CGI to submit, then another to get the last 10 posts, right? ______________________________________________________________________
Perfection in engineering does not happen when there is nothing more to add.
Rather it happens when there is nothing more to take away.

 

[iostream71]

that's right, one script handles all the reading writing

 

[iostream71]

bump

 

[KarveR]

read up on flock

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.flock.php

be aware of the warning about O/S dependancy.

You may have to consider read/write to a temp file and then destroying the old and recreate with new.

For this you will need copy() and unlink() ***************************************
Party on, dudes!

 

[sleipnir214]

flock might be able to solve your problem.

A solution you also might want to explore is to store your guestbook entries to a MySQL database. ______________________________________________________________________
Perfection in engineering does not happen when there is nothing more to add.
Rather it happens when there is nothing more to take away.

 

[iostream71]

thanks, i'll check into those ideas