Reading Files Into a String or Array

Download: File Handling Cheat Sheet

Examples for reading a file

#0. Include or Require puts the contents of the specified file directly into the current file as if you had typed it yourself.

include 'myfile.txt';

#1. Open a connection to a file, using fopen(), and work with that file line by line before you close the resource. Functions for reading each line include fgetc, fgets, fgetss, and fread.

if ($fh = fopen('mytext.txt', 'r')) {
    while (!feof($fh)) {
        $line = fgets($fh);
        echo $line;
    }
    fclose($fh);
}

#2. Read the entire file into a string using file_get_contents

$file = file_get_contents('myfile.txt');
echo $file;

#3. Read the entire file into an array of lines using file.

$file_lines = file('mytext.txt');
foreach ($file_lines as $line) {
    echo $line;
}

NOTE: On the Windows platform, be careful to escape any backslashes used in the path to the file, or use forward slashes.

$fh = fopen("c:\\folder\\myfile.txt", "r");

Filesystem Functions

PHP offers many more functions than what we covered here. Examples (* marks functions we've used in this course):

• basename — Returns trailing name component of path
• chmod — Changes file mode
• chown — Changes file owner
• copy — Copies file
• delete — See unlink or unset
• dirname — Returns a parent directory's path
• * fclose — Closes an open file pointer
• * feof — Tests for end-of-file on a file pointer
• fgetc — Gets character from file pointer
• * fgets — Gets line from file pointer *
• fgetss — Gets line from file pointer and strip HTML tags
• file_exists — Checks whether a file or directory exists
• * file_get_contents — Reads entire file into a string
• * file — Reads entire file into an array
• * fopen — Opens file or URL
• fread — Binary-safe file read
• * is_dir — Tells whether the filename is a directory
• is_writable — Tells whether the filename is writable
• mkdir — Makes directory
• pathinfo — Returns information about a file path
• rmdir — Removes directory
• unlink — Deletes a file

For more functions and options, check out the documentation for Directory Functions and File System Functions.

PERMISSIONS

If you are having problems with accessing files, a good place to start looking is at the file permissions. To learn more about file permissions, check out our Console Foundations course, specifically the video on File Permissions