Simple PHP editor of text files

Question

I have developed a site for a client and he wants to be able to edit a small part of the main page in a backend type of solution. So as a solution, I want to add a very basic editor (domain.com/backend/editor.php) that when you visit it, it will have a textfield with the code and a save button. The code that it will edit will be set to a TXT file.

I would presume that such thing would be easy to code in PHP but google didn't assist me this time so I am hoping that there might be someone here that would point me to the right direction. Note that I have no experience in PHP programming, only HTML and basic javascript so please be thorough in any reply that you provide.

Answer 1

You create a HTML form to edit the text-file's content. In case it get's submitted, you update the text-file (and redirect to the form again to prevent F5/Refresh warnings):

<?php

// configuration
$url = 'http://example.com/backend/editor.php';
$file = '/path/to/txt/file';

// check if form has been submitted
if (isset($_POST['text']))
{
    // save the text contents
    file_put_contents($file, $_POST['text']);

    // redirect to form again
    header(sprintf('Location: %s', $url));
    printf('<a href="%s">Moved</a>.', htmlspecialchars($url));
    exit();
}

// read the textfile
$text = file_get_contents($file);

?>
<!-- HTML form -->
<form action="" method="post">
<textarea name="text"><?php echo htmlspecialchars($text) ?></textarea>
<input type="submit" />
<input type="reset" />
</form>

Answer 2

To read the file:

<?php
    $file = "pages/file.txt";
    if(isset($_POST))
    {
        $postedHTML = $_POST['html']; // You want to make this more secure!
        file_put_contents($file, $postedHTML);
    }
?>
<form action="" method="post">
    <?php
    $content = file_get_contents($file);
    echo "<textarea name='html'>" . htmlspecialchars($content) . "</textarea>";
    ?>
    <input type="submit" value="Edit page" />
</form>