PHP Files I/O Problems

g'day all

ive just being playing around with a little polling script, and ive added some code to stop users from voting twice, by adding their ip address using $REMOTE_ADDR to a file.

its a little strange however, because it stops them voting more than once initially but after a some period of time they are able to vote again.

here is my code

when they vote its adds the ip address to a file called poll.log
using this statement:
fputs($fp, $REMOTE_ADDR . "\n");

and before they vote its checks using this code:

//Check IP address again poll.log

$logData = file($LOG_FILE);

$noAddresses = count($logData);

for($i = 0; $i < $noAddresses; $i++)
{
if(trim($logData[$i]) == $REMOTE_ADDR)
{
$match = true;
}
else
{
$match = false;
}
}

if($match == true)
{
//show cant vote twice page
}
else
{
//show vote page
}



can anyone see anything wrong? im clueless.

cya later fellas

Hey Stuie,

Hmmmm... It's really hard to block on IP addresses alone. I personally use IP addresses and cookies, because the IP address can change next time they vote if they're on a dynamic (ie phone) line.

Try setting a cookie that expires in a year as well as the IP in the file, that should do the trick.

thanks for the reply mytch...

ill take that advice on board, im just wondering though why the hell its not working... ive got a static ip and ive tried it over my LAN and the ip addresses are static, im just wondering what the hell ive done...

anyway... thanks alot for the cookie idea... didnt even think about it.

cheers mate