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PHP File open read

Read the contents of a file in PHP

PHP comes with a couple of different ways to read the contents of file.

Read the contents using file_get_contents( ) function

The easiest way to read the contents of a disk file with the file_get_contents( ) function.

This function accepts the name and path to a disk file, and read the entire file into a string variable.

Eg i

<?php

//read file into string

$str=file_get_contents('output.txt') or die('ERROR:cannot find the file');

echo $str;

?>


Read the contents using file( ) function

An alternative way of reading data from a file is file( ) function, which accepts the name and path to a file and reads the entire file into an array, with each element of the array representing one line of the file. Here's an example which reads a file into an array and then displays it using foreach loop.

Eg ii

<?php

//read file into array

$arr=file('output.txt') or die('ERROR: cannot file file');

foreach($arr as $line)

{

echo $line;

} 

?>

Reading remote files contents

All above defined file_get_contents( ) function and file( ) function support reading data from URLs using either the HTTP or FTP protocols. Here's an example which reads an HTML file off the Web into an array.

Eg iii

<?php

//read file into array
$arr=file('http://www.google.com') or die('ERROR: cannot file file');

foreach($arr as $line)

{

echo $line;

} 

?>

In case of slow network links, it's sometimes more efficient to read a remote file in "chunks" to maximize the efficiency of available network bandwidth.

=> Read the contents of the file using fread( ) function

=> Read the contents of the file using fgets( ) function

=> Read the contents of the file using fgetc( ) function

To do this use the fgets( ) function to read a specific number of bytes from a file. Here's an example which reads an HTML file using fgets( ) function.

Eg iv

<?php

//read file into array chunks
$fo=fopen('http://www.google.com','r') or die('ERROR: cannot open file');

while(!feof($fo))

 {

	 $str.=fgets($fp,512);  

 }

echo $str;

fclose($fo);

?>


Read the external PHP file using include( ) or require( ) function

There are 4 functions to include external PHP files.

  1. inculde( )
  2. require( )
  3. inculde_once( )
  4. require_once( )

include( ) function says, a file should be developed which you want to call, otherwise it shows waring error.

require( ) function says, a file must be developed which you want to call, otherwise it shows Fatal error.

include_once( ) function says, a file should be called once on a page.

require_once( ) function says, a file must be called once on a page.


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