"Glen: In unix on the command-line, you can touch files you don't own - but like other comments on this page state - PHP's built in touch won't work."
No, you can not modify files you don't have write access to in a multi-user environment, ever, under any circumstances. The reason why you fail to do this "in PHP" is because your httpd is most likely running as a "shared" setup, running as nobody/nobody, and your user's files aren't world-writable, and they are not owned by nobody/nobody. Change your required files to be world-writable and you can touch() them, and more.
touch
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
touch — Muda o tempo de modificação do arquivo
Descrição
Tenta mudar o tempo de acesso e modificação do arquivo filename para o valor informado em time . Note que a data/hora do último acesso do arquivo sempre é alterado, independentemente do número de parâmetros.
Se o arquivo não existe, ele será criado.
Parâmetros
- filename
-
O nome do arquivo a ser atualizado.
- time
-
Hora da atualização. Se time não é fornecido, o tempo atual do sistema é usado.
- atime
-
Se informado, o tempo do acesso do dado arquivo é definido para o valor de atime
Valor Retornado
Retorna TRUE em caso de sucesso ou FALSE em falhas.
Exemplos
Exemplo #1 Exemplo da função touch()
<?php
if (touch ($nomedoarquivo)) {
print "o tempo do $nomedoarquivo foi modificado para o dia e hora atual";
} else {
print "Desculpe, não foi possivel modificar o tempo de $nomedoarquivo";
}
?>
Notas
Não é atualmente possível modificar a hora de modificação de um diretório com esta função no Windows.
touch
25-Aug-2008 01:20
08-Aug-2008 05:07
Important info:
touch() used on a directory always returns FALSE and prints "Permission denied" on NTFS and FAT Filesystem (tested on winXP).
26-Jun-2008 12:29
I've been trying to set a filemtime into the future with touch() on PHP5.
It seems touch $time has a future limit around 1000000 seconds (11 days or so). Beyond this point it reverts to a previous $time.
It doesn't make much sense but I could save you hours of time.
$time = time()+1500000;
touch($cachedfile,$time);
18-Oct-2007 01:01
In unix on the command-line, you can touch files you don't own - but like other comments on this page state - PHP's built in touch won't work.
I simple alternative (on unix):
<?php
function touch_it_good($filename)
{
exec("touch {$filename}");
}
?>
21-May-2007 08:10
Feathern wrote a little script for fetching files from a directory after a certain date.
However the if statement (line 8) should be:
if(($test[2] > 2002) || (($test[2] = 2002) && ($test[0] > 6)) || (($test[2] = 2002) && ($test[0] = 6) && ($test[1] > 17))){
echo $filelist[$i]."\r\n";
}
Otherwise the script won't fetch lots of files it should.
(In the example given, it should fetch all the files created after 06/17/2002, but the original script would miss files created 03/18/2003 or 11/01/2004)
31-Mar-2007 09:09
The script for modifying the access time without modifying the modified time is overly complicated:
<? touch($filename, date('U', filemtime($filename)), time()); ?>
Since filemtime returns a UNIX timestamp, there is no need to call date('U') so the script could be simplified to:
<? touch($filename,filemtime($filename),time()); ?>
18-Jul-2006 06:10
Update the access time without updating the modified time:
Unix command: touch -a filename
PHP: touch(filename, date('U', filemtime(filename)), time())
01-Sep-2005 05:09
If you're going to go around deleting (unlinking) files
that you don't own just in order to change the modification
time on the file, you darn well better chown() the file
back to it's original ownership after you are done and
chmod() it back to it's correct permissions. Otherwise
you will almost certainly break things. Additionally the
code listed for touch()ing a file you don't own should
set the file creation time back to it's original time if
what is wanted is to just change the modification time.
Also, the code listed will break things if there is an i/o
error such as disk full or too many files in the directory.
Here's how the code SHOULD be written:
Create the new file FIRST, rather than last, with a different
name such as $file.tmp.
Read the ownership, permissions, and creation time of the old file.
Set permissions and creation time of the new file the same as the old.
Rename the new file to the name of the old.
chown() the new file to the user that owned the file it's replacing.
Please be careful adding to the documentation if you've
never taken programming 101.
25-Jul-2005 12:19
Note: the script to touch a file you don't own will change it's owner so ensure permissions are correct or you could lose access to it
12-May-2005 03:42
Here's a little workaround that allows the PHP user to touch a file it doesn't own:
<?php
$target_file = "/path/to/file/filename.txt"; //system filepath to your file
$file_content = implode("",file($target_file));
@unlink($target_file);
if($savetofile = fopen($target_file, "w")) {
fputs($savetofile, $file_content);
fclose($savetofile);
}
$new_date = strtotime("23 April 2005"); // set the required date timestamp here
touch($target_file,$new_date);
?>
Of course, PHP needs to have write access to the folder containing the file you want to touch, but that should be easy to arrange.
13-Aug-2002 03:31
Neat little script that will give you a list of all modified files in a certain folder after a certain date:
$filelist = Array();
$filelist = list_dir("d:\\my_folder");
for($i=0;$i<count($filelist);$i++){
$test = Array();
$test = explode("/",date("m/d/Y",filemtime($filelist[$i])));
//example of files that are later then
//06/17/2002
if(($test[2] > 2001) && ($test[1] > 16) && ($test[0] > 5)){
echo $filelist[$i]."\r\n";
}
clearstatcache();
}
function list_dir($dn){
if($dn[strlen($dn)-1] != '\\') $dn.='\\';
static $ra = array();
$handle = opendir($dn);
while($fn = readdir($handle)){
if($fn == '.' || $fn == '..') continue;
if(is_dir($dn.$fn)) list_dir($dn.$fn.'\\');
else $ra[] = $dn.$fn;
}
closedir($handle);
return $ra;
}
06-Oct-2001 03:41
To spare you ppl couple of hours of valuable time, you can only TOUCH a file that you own! Usually PHP is *nobody*
Warm regards,
Emile Bosch
15-May-2001 11:23
$filename = "test.dat";
if (!file_exists($filename)) {
touch($filename); // Create blank file
chmod($filename,0666);
}
