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I've got a PHP Script that creates a txt file using a form and saves it under the filename "businesscard-1.txt". If i gonna run the Script again it overrides the "businesscard-1.txt" with the new data. But i want it to create a new file with the name "businesscard-2.txt" and if this exists too, than it should get the name "businesscard-3.txt" etc. Does anyone know how to do that ?

<?php

$part1 = $_POST["Imputfield-1"];
$part2 = $_POST["Imputfield-2"];
$part3 = $_POST["Imputfield-3"];

$file = fopen('businesscard-1.txt', 'w+');

ftruncate($file, 0);

$content =
$part1. PHP_EOL .
$part2. PHP_EOL .
$part3. PHP_EOL ;

fwrite($file , $content);
fclose($file );

header("Location: Page2.htm");
die();

?>
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If you need help with specific code, please ask on Stack overflow. Here is a description of the types of questions that are welcome on Programmers. – Jay Elston yesterday
up vote 1 down vote

You could:

use tempnam to create a file with a unique filename:

$tmpfname = tempnam('/mydir', 'businesscard-');
$file = fopen($tmpfname, 'w+');

pro

  • this is very simple

con

generate a unique ID to be appended to the filename:

$filename = uniqid('businesscard-');
$file = fopen($filename, 'w+');

The identifier is based on the current time in microseconds (the return value is little different from microtime. Further details here).

pros

  • simple
  • recording order can be inferred from filename

con

  • pay attention to concurrent requests for ID generation

adopt a file_exists based approach:

$i = 0;

while (!$filename)
{
  if (!file_exists("businesscard-$i.txt"))
    $filename = "businesscard-$i.txt";

  $i++;
}

pro

  • this is what you was thinking of

cons

  • race conditions
  • performance

Store somewhere the last used ID (database / file), e.g.

function get_next()
{
  $num = (int)file_get_contents('generator.txt');
  $num += 1;
  file_put_contents('generator.txt', $num);

  return $num;
}
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