[Mod request] alternative version check

If your host is dreamhost like mine, I believe there is a dreamhost wiki about this, wiki.dreamhost.com

The only way to do it is to have it check a file on our site so that we can update the information. I only know how to do that via php, but you could possibly use some other kind of script. I'm guessing that if your host disabled it for php, they might have disabled other ways also.

The best way for you to keep up with updates is to subscribe to the 3.0 News and Updates forum. You'll get an email letting you know when a new version is released. That forum was set up just for that, and only admins can start topics there, so you won't get a lot of junk.

OK thanks for your help. @Becca: Yes it's dreamhost, but I had this problem on another server too. I think I'll use the forums updates and turn the versionchecker off.

This has already been done and added to efiction. The latest version check should work on any host that has either cURL or allow_url_fopen support. If the host has neither, it displays a message telling you it won't work on your server.

Please let me know if it doesn't work for you. I believe it was added in either 3.1.1 or 3.2.

in the meantime, you could always just subscribe to the News forum here.

https://efiction.org/forums/index.php?board=37.0

You'll get an e-mail when a new topic is posted a lot sooner than going to the archive and checking if you are out of date.

There shouldn't be an "in the meantime"... I've already fixed it.

The following fuction could be used in versioncheck.php to download the version number - it uses CURL if available like the current version check code, but then falls back on using raw sockets calls. It does not attempt to use the URL support in fopen as it is poor security practice to enable that setting.

$host is the name or IP address to download from. $path is the local path on that server begining with '/'.

function http_fetch($host,$path) {

if (function_exists('curl_init')) {

   $ch = curl_init();

   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, " http://$host$path"); 
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
   $content = curl_exec($ch);
   curl_close($ch);
   return $content;
}

if (!function_exists("socket_create")) {
return false;
}
$address = gethostbyname($host);
$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
if ($socket === false) {
return false;
}

$result = socket_connect($socket, $address, 80);
if ($result === false) {
   		return false;
   	}

$in = "GET $path HTTP/1.1rn";
$in .= "Host: $hostrn";
$in .= "Connection: Closernrn";
$out = '';

socket_write($socket, $in, strlen($in));
while ($outb = socket_read($socket, 4096)) {
   $out.=$outb;
}

socket_close($socket);

if (substr($out,0,12) != "HTTP/1.1 200") {
return false;
}


return substr($out,strpos($out,"rnrn")+4);
}