使用XML / CSV / FTP自动php / mysql更新脚本

Question

Im currently working on developing a PHP/MYSQL property classifieds website where people can register and manually add property classified adverts. This is all working fine, but I now need to add the functionality to bulk upload property adverts.

There are 2 ways I need to do this, the first is via XML, where a member who is registered on our site can add the url of an XML file on their server, on their account page on our website. Our automatic script will read through the XML file each evening and populate our MYSQL database using the details and images from their XML feed.

The second part is where I am struggling. Some Estate Agents want to be able to upload their properties to our website by FTP'ing a ZIP file, with CSV file and images to our server each evening, so we can then read through the CSV file and populare the MYSQL database from this.

How would we go about giving each Estate agent a place on our server to ftp their files too? Could I automatically create a directory on our server with the name of their username where only they had access to FTP too? Would I be able to automatically create FTP accounts on my server?

Please note I am running a linux server with CPANEL installed. My website is developing in PHP with a MYSQL database.

Any advice on the best methods to implement this functionality would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You'll be better off offering a HTTPS file upload, rather than FTP, because you can secure that with your existing PHP/MySQL authentication system and it doesn't require any technical knowledge from your clients. Then you can use use PHP to parse the ZIP file and check it contains what you need in real time, and provide instant feedback if images are missing or the CSV is corrupt, saving you some customer support effort.

See http://www.php.net/manual/en/class.ziparchive.php

Automating the creation of FTP accounts would require pam_mysql, and may cause a conflict with cPanel. If you really want to do that, ask over on serverfault.com