PHP File Handling

PHP File Handling

File handling is an important part of any web application. You often need to open and process a file for different tasks.

PHP has several built-in functions for creating, reading, uploading, and editing files.

The core functions for file handling is:

• readfile() - reads a file and writes it to the output buffer
• fopen() - gives you more options than the readfile() function
• fread() - reads from a file
• fgets() - reads a single line from a file
• fgetc() - reads a single character from a file
• feof() - checks if the "end-of-file" (EOF) has been reached
• fwrite() - writes to a file
• fclose() - closes an open file
• unlink() - deletes a file

PHP readfile() Function

The readfile() function reads a file and writes it to the output buffer.

Assume we have a text file called "webdictionary.txt", stored on the server, that looks like this:

The PHP code to read the file and write it to the output buffer is as follows (the readfile() function returns the number of bytes read on success):

The readfile() function is useful if all you want to do is open up a file and read its contents.

The next chapters will teach you more about file handling.