I need help finding the right way to read and write to a Linux text file using JavaScript, jQuery, and PHP. Specifically, I want to retrieve the value from a textarea (#taFile) with jQuery ($("#taFile").val();) and send it via $.post to a PHP script that will then write the value to a text file.
Although my code is mostly functional, I have encountered an issue: when sending the textarea value via $.post, all special characters are disappearing. More specifically, 1) all special characters vanish, 2) new lines are turned into spaces, and 3) everything after certain special characters (like #) is lost.
These scripts are still in progress, so I am open to any suggestions or improvements!
Javascript:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("input:button").button();
$("#tabs").tabs();
$("#tabs").tabs({
select: function(event, ui) { // When a tab is selected
file = ui.panel.id;
console.log("js: file: "+file);
if (file == "items" || file == "groups" || file == "whitelist" || file == "users"){ // if file is valid
$("#taFile").remove(); // Remove any old textareas
$("#"+file).html(''); // Add a new textarea
$.post("/php/getFile.php?action=read&file="+file, function(data){ // Post with the current file
$("#taFile").val(data); // Put file into textarea
});
}
}
});
$("#btnSubmit").click(function() {
var newcfg = $("#taFile").val();
alert(newcfg); // This shows that newcfg preserves the exact value of the textarea
console.log(newcfg); // As does this.
$.post("/php/getFile.php?action=write&file="+file+"&newcfg="+newcfg); // This shows new lines (\n ?) as " " (a space) and removes all special characters (! , # ; : etc)
});
});
PHP:
$file = $_REQUEST['file'];
$newcfg = $_REQUEST['newcfg'];
$action = $_REQUEST['action'];
$user = 'public';
$config = "/home/$user/mc/$file.txt";
if ($action == "read"){
$oldcfg = file_get_contents($config);
echo $oldcfg;
} else if ($action == "write") { #if writing
$fh = fopen($config, 'w') or die("Cant write to file"); #open file
fwrite($fh, $newcfg); #write file
fclose($fh); #close file
}
I had to remove the php tags as they caused the actual PHP code to not show up. Not that some of the script is for reading the file in first, when changing tabs. That all works fine.
Thank you!