Logging to a Text File

Phorm™ v3.5.2

Logging to a Text File:

You can have Phorm log form contents to a text file. Create a blank file, and define the variable $PHORM_LOG with the name of this file. Note that this file must be world-writeable or else Phorm must be running under your user ID. You will also need to define $PHORM_LOGVAR as a space-delimited list of variables to log. For example:

   $PHORM_LOGVAR = "Name PHORM_FROM Comments";

Note: Do not put the dollar sign in front of the variable name.

Delimiter Character

The variable $PHORM_LDELIM can be defined to contain a character or string of characters to separate the fields in the log file. If it is not defined, it defaults to a single tab character.

Line Breaks

Different operating systems use different characters to represent the end of a line in a text file. For Windows it's a carriage return character (CR) followed by a linefeed character (LF). For Unix it's just LF. For Mac OS it's just CR. For line breaks in the text log, Phorm attempts to use whatever character(s) are used by the system it's installed on, but you can change it to whatever you wish. Just set the variable $PHORM_LINEBRK to the desired character(s). Use the designations shown above, which will be converted to the actual characters. For example:

   $PHORM_LINEBRK = "CRLF";

Quoting Fields

If there is a possibility that data from the form may contain the delimiter character(s), you may wish to quote the field that may contain it. To do this, add single-quote characters around the field name in the $PHORM_LOGVAR string; for example:

   $PHORM_LOGVAR = "Name PHORM_FROM 'Comments'";

If you would like a different character to be used for quoting, you can specify it with the variable $PHORM_LOGQUOT. When the line is written to the log, the single-quote characters in $PHORM_LOGVAR will be replaced with this character. Note that, regardless of what you have $PHORM_LOGQUOT set to, you still indicate the location of the quote character in $PHORM_LOGVAR using the single-quote character.

Multiple Logs

If you wish to log to more than one file, or to log more than one line to a file, $PHORM_LOG and $PHORM_LOGVAR can both be defined as arrays. If there are values in $PHORM_LOGVAR without a match in $PHORM_LOG, they will be logged in file in the first file defined in $PHORM_LOG.

   $PHORM_LOG[1]    = "log1.txt";
   $PHORM_LOG[2]    = "log2.txt";
   $PHORM_LOGVAR[1] = "firstname lastname username password";
   $PHORM_LOGVAR[2] = "timestamp $REMOTE_ADDR";
   $PHORM_LOGVAR[3] = "email ordernum"; (will be logged in log1.txt)

You can also define $PHORM_LDELIM and $PHORM_LOGQUOT as arrays if you wish. If you do, $PHORM_LDELIM[1] and $PHORM_LOGQUOT[1] will be used with $PHORM_LOG[1], and so on. If $PHORM_LDELIM and $PHORM_LOGQUOT are defined but are not arrays, they will simply be used with all logs.

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