Problems with fopen FTP upload to another server

The Project:
I am working on a project that requires that I move a file from the local
server to an arbitrary remote server (given a username and password) via
FTP using PHP.  The project is a content management system of sorts, and I
will need to be able to allow users to press a "Publish" button and it will
FTP a local HTML file to their remote webserver of choice.

The Problem:
The documentation pointed me to using fopen().  But the following command
fails with an "Transport endpoint not connected" error when I try to use it:

$fp = fopen("ftp://user:[email protected]/file.txt","w");

When followed by a fputs(), that command should open a passive FTP session
with hostname.com and allow me to write to file.txt (which may or may not
exist on the remote server).  But it fails every time.

I thought about using fsockopen() and writing my own FTP connection
functions, but it is way too difficult (FTP uses two ports 21/20 and such),
and would be basically reinventing the wheel.

Due to project constraints and such, assume that I can not use the PHP4
ftp_ functions, and that I cant recompile PHP with the ftp_ functions.
Also, I must use FTP to transfer the files, not any other protocol.  And
assume that I can not use any third party stuff, such as ncFTP or Perl.  It
all has to be PHP3.

I have tried connecting to many servers, all of which support boh active
and passive FTP sessions without a problem.  So the problem is defninitely
in the PHP, not the servers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

Please cc: my email address with your replies, as I am not subscribed to
this mailing list.

Thank you in advance,
John



John P. Mulligan <[email protected]>