php zip file not created despite no erros, no permission problems, no empty folders, no

Question

Okay. Every file exists, is readable, and is writable. ZIP produces no errors, and outputs: "numfiles: 140 status:0".

the code reads a log, checks for specific text, then imports a number of images into a zip folder. everything runs great except the zip folder is always empty. I've read a lot of threads about this, and they all were resolved by changing permissions, modifying paths and checking for read/write/exist/errors. but... nothing has worked. whats up?

<?php
$file = fopen("log.log", "r") or exit("Unable to open file!");

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$filename = "E:/Web Sites/whatever/order_stream/images.zip";
$try_file = $zip->open($filename,ZIPARCHIVE::OVERWRITE);

if ($try_file !== true) {
    exit("cannot open <$filename>\n");
}

while(!feof($file)) {
    $line = fgets($file);
    $results = explode(": ", $line);
    if ($results[0] == "Copying" || $results[0] == "File already exists, overwriting") {
        $file_name = substr($results[1],19);
        $to_zip = "E:/Web Sites/whatever/catalog/pictures/".$file_name;
        $to_zip = trim($to_zip);
        if (file_exists($to_zip)) {
            $zip->addFile($to_zip);
        }
    }
}

echo "numfiles: " . $zip->numFiles . "\n";
echo "status:" . $zip->status . "\n";

$zip->close();
fclose($file);
?> 

Answer 1

The ZipArchive::addFile() method accepts the path to the file as its first parameter, but not all paths are created equal. addFile() method silently rejects (bug?) the file and you never know what went wrong. An alternative approach would be:

// $zip->addFile($file);
$content = file_get_contents($file);
$zip->addFromString(pathinfo ( $file, PATHINFO_BASENAME), $content);

In addition to getting the code working, file_get_contents() also generates decent error messages if you made an error in the path. In this example

$file = $full_directory_path_ending_with_slash.$filename;

Since in the above question, you have the parts in your fingers, the code could simply become:

$content = file_get_contents($to_zip);
$zip->addFromString($filename, $content);