C fwrite with JPEG Data

Hi All,

I'm very new to C programming.....I usually stick to PHP and AS3.

But I'm trying to write a PHP extension in C to handle JPEG data that comes in via AS3 (a flash application I built) and write it to a file.

In PHP it looks like this:

PHP Code:

$handle=fopen($file, "w"); 
fwrite($handle, $data); 
fclose($handle); 


It simply takes already JPEG-Encoded data and puts it in a JPEG file. But I can't get it to do the same in C. I have this:

Code:

zval *prefile; // file name
	zval *predatas; // jpeg data
	long flen, clen, datas_len;
	size_t len = 0;
	if(zend_parse_parameters(ZEND_NUM_ARGS() TSRMLS_CC, "z|z", &prefile, &predatas, &flen, &clen, &datas_len) == FAILURE) {
		return;
	}
    char *file = Z_STRVAL_P(prefile); // file name
    char *data = Z_STRVAL_P(predatas); // jpeg data
	
	FILE *fp = fopen(file,"w"); // open the file
	len = strlen(data); // length of data
    fwrite(data, len, 1, fp); // fwrite the data
    if(fclose(fp)) { // close the data
	RETURN_STRING("true", 1);
	} else {
	RETURN_STRING("false", 1);
	}

Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong? Keep in mind the data I get from flash player is already JPEG encoded data.....it just needs a file to live in which is what I want C to do.

Any suggestions? Thanks,
Alex

How exactly is it not working? We need some specifics, like error messages. Can you even compile the code? Does it write the file, but incorrectly or not write the file at all. You always need to check the return value of your file functions and print a useful error message if they fail. Look into perror(), the errno variable and strerror(). fopen will return NULL on failure, and fwrite should return the number of bytes written. Make sure they did what you expected.

Also, note that JPEG data will most likely contain zero bytes, which is the '\0' character. That signifies the end of a string in C, and is what strlen uses to determine end of string. You are probably getting an incorrect length for fwrite and will need a better way to get the true length of the data to write.

You're treating your jpeg data as if it were a string -- but it's not. A string is a null-terminated char array. When you use strlen(data) to pass the size of the array to fwrite, you are measuring the length in bytes from the beginning of the array up to the first 0 -- which probably doesn't even get you past the header.

I agree. strlen() is not appropriate to use here. Plus the file should be opened using "wb".

Sorry about that! I don't know what I was thinking when I didn't put my problem in the message. My bad.

It does create a file, which is named properly, but it's only 4 bytes each time. When I change the file extension to .txt, I can see four odd characters in the file like this: ˇÿˇ‡

So yes, I'm able to compile the code without problems.

Now, what's interesting is that when I tell it to put text in the file instead of JPEG data, it writes the text properly. So I can create a file, for example, called test.txt with "hello world" in it. So it's just a problem with the JPEG data. Maybe it has something to do with the way I bring the variables in or something, but I'm not experienced enough with C to know what to look for in the code. I've spent most of the day today working on this.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by R.Stiltskin

You're treating your jpeg data as if it were a string -- but it's not. A string is a null-terminated char array. When you use strlen(data) to pass the size of the array to fwrite, you are measuring the length in bytes from the beginning of the array up to the first 0 -- which probably doesn't even get you past the header.

Yeah, I figured it might have something to do with that.....is there another way to do it that I should try?

Thanks for all of the quick replies everybody.....this is really helping me out.

Whatever you pass to this PHP extension must know the data and length. Make sure both of those make it down to your C function, and when you call fwrite, use that length you pass in.

What data type should my JPEG data be in? Long?

Did you get prototype for this function Z_STRVAL_P(predatas) ? Or maybe zval? If pointer is appropriate then it really doesn't matter whether it's char *, unsigned char *, or any other. It's just an address pointing to some contiguous block of memory. As was mentioned before, there should be a way for you to find out what the length is. Is it in units of bytes? shorts? longs?

Ahh, got it! It was just about getting that third parameter through there for the size.

One additional question however, if I want to combine a variable with some string text, what's the best way?

For example, in PHP, I'd do this:

PHP Code:

$filename = "1234";
$file =  $filename . ".jpg";

echo $file; //this would give me "1234.jpg"; 


Thanks!

The usual way in C is to use sprintf which works basically the same as printf except it writes to a string instead of to the console.