How to get the FTP error when using PHP

Question

I have a script which logs on to a remote server and tries to rename files, using PHP.

The code currently looks something like this example from the php.net website:

if (ftp_rename($conn_id, $old_file, $new_file)) {
 echo "successfully renamed $old_file to $new_file\n";
} else {
 echo "There was a problem while renaming $old_file to $new_file\n";
}

but ... what was the error? Permissions, no such directory, disk full?

How can I get PHP to return the FTP error? Something like this:

echo "There was a problem while renaming $old_file to $new_file: 
the server says $error_message\n";

Answer 1

Looking at the FTP API here:

http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.ftp-rename.php

There doesn't seem to be any way to get anything but true or false.

However, you could use ftp_raw to send a raw RENAME command, and then parse the returned message.

Answer 2

Good idea, thanks for that.