PHP web page fails when error message contains quotes

[NFLD.Republic]

Hi folks,

I think that I just found a bug with Cumulus 1.9.4.1085. My antivirus had a Cumulus data file locked during a full scan which caused Cumulus not be able to write to the file in the $LatestError variable. Cumulus put the error into the file uploaded to my website as it should have. However, the file name was double quoted which caused PHP to choke with the error

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PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in [directory_path]/cumuluswebtags.php on line 528

Is there any way to send out the error without double quotes?

Thanks
Mike

[steve]

I'm not a PHP expert, so you'll have to help me by explaining where Cumulus comes into this. Is it the <#LatestError> web tag? If so, what did the web tag actually contain?

The error message probably came from Windows, with the double quotes already included. But even if Cumulus did put the double quotes in, it's not clear to me why you think that it's a bug in Cumulus? Perhaps all will be clear when I see the actual text.

If the problem is that your PHP string has double quotes in it, then can you not use single quotes for the string delimiter?

[SpaceWalker]

It might be useful to other if you would attache the source file used to produce the 'cumuluswebtags.php' file or at the very least post the code (webtags) used in lines 527-529 of the 'cumuluswebtags.php' source file.

[NFLD.Republic]

I do not have the actual error from the PHP file (clearing the error in Cumulus and restarting Cumulus updates the web tag "fixing" the problem).

These are the lines with the before and after tags; the error was with the $LatestError tag. It looked something like this (the position of the quotes is the important part for PHP

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$ErrorLight           = "1";  // 1 if the 'error' light is flashing, 0 if not
$LatestError          = "Latest Error: "Some filename was locked" recorded";  // The latest error logged to the error log window. Cleared to an empty string when the error light is clicked, and when Cumulus is restarted
$LatestErrorDate      = "120513";  // The date of the latest error logged to the error log window, using the system short date format. Gives dashes when latest error is reset

So, when the PHP interpreter parsed the line it read "Latest Error: " as text and then tried to interpret the "Some filename was locked" as PHP code.

The error is (was?) correct. It was just the quoting in the string.

[mcrossley]

So the quick fix is to use single quotes in the PHP file that uses the web tag...

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$LatestError          = '<#LatestError>';

And hope none of the error messages contain a single quote

[SpaceWalker]

And to make Mark's 'hope' more 'hopeful', you could use the following:

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$LatestError = str_replace("'", '"', '<#LatestError>');

Thus producing a webtags such as :

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$LatestError = 'Latest Error: "Some filename was locked" recorded';

[mcrossley]

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$LatestError = str_replace("'", '"', '<#LatestError>');

Hmm, think about it...

[steve]

Come on, Mark, enlighten us. I can't see anything wrong with Ray's suggestion.

Edit: Ah, hold on... you're back with the same problem you started with.

[mcrossley]

Yeah, the problem is Cumulus is in effect directly editing the source code and producing a syntax error, rather than a variable being set with some content we want to change.

So the code would become (as a synthetic example)...

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$LatestError = str_replace("'", '"', 'Latest Error: 'Some filename was locked' recorded');

The string is now 'Latest Error: ' followed by some invalid PHP code >> Some filename was locked << followed by another string ' recorded'. So the str_replace() would not find anything to replace in the first string even if the line passed the PHP parser.

[mcrossley]

So use this syntax (if you have PHP v5.3.0 or later)...

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$LatestError = <<<'EOT'
<#LatestError>
EOT;

Edit: Actually another quick Google shows the heredoc syntax which is support prior to 5.3.0...

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$LatestError = <<<EOT
<#LatestError>
EOT;

Note in both of them the text must not be indented on the line, nor the terminating character string ('EOT' in this case).

Edit2: Spooky, I was using just this syntax today when writing some scripts to configure the iLO management processors on a customers blade servers via a SSH command line. I didn't know PHP supported it as well.

[beteljuice]

Surely there is something 'wrong' with the initial contruct ?

"Latest Error: "Some filename was locked" recorded"

I would have expected it to be:

"Latest Error: Some filename was locked"
OR
"Latest Error recorded: Some filename was locked"

Is this really the output of <#LatestError> or is it constructed from code together with the <#webtag> ?

[steve]

This is the output of <#LatestError> when I lock a data file by opening it in MS Word while Cumulus is trying to write a log entry:

05/12/2013 08:56:00 Error closing data file: C:\Users\steve\Documents\RAD Studio\Projects\Cumulus\Release\Win32\data\Dec13log.txt. I/O error 103

The bit in red is the Windows error message which gets tacked on the end of the message generated by Cumulus. I'm assuming that this was not the type of error message which caused the original issue, but I don't know what the actual error message would have been.