I have a file named "connection.php". I want to read the contents of this file to a string. I use fopen, and read functions for reading. But when I am reading I just got only last 2-3 lines on that file. That means no PHP scripts can read like echo, functions etc. How can I read the whole contents on that file?
<?php
$str = file_get_contents('connection.php');
var_dump($str);
?>
note that if 'connection.php' contains '<?php' at the beginning, and you try to output it to a browser, you likely won't see anything unless you perform a "View Source".
Quoting the manual page of fread :
fread() reads up to length bytes from
the file pointer referenced by handle
. Reading stops as soon as one of the
following conditions is met:
length bytes have been read
EOF (end of file) is reached
a packet becomes available (for network streams)
8192 bytes have been read (after opening userspace stream)
If you want to read a whole file, you'll need to use some kind of loop, to read data until you reach the end of the file.
Or, as an alternate (probably easier), you can use file_get_contents, which will get you the whole content of the file with only one function call.
Which means no need for fopen + multiple fread + fclose ;-)
Perhaps your browser is hiding the content because it starts with '<?php'. You can try View Source in your web browser, or echo the contents in the following way:
<?php
$contents = file_get_contents('connection.php');
echo "<pre>";
echo htmlentities($contents);
echo "</pre>";
Related
This question already has answers here:
Difference between file, file_get_contents, and fopen in PHP
(2 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
What's the difference between fopen('file.txt', 'r') and file('file.txt')? They both appear to be the same...
Here's some info. Quote on file(), file_get_contents(), and fopen():
The first two, file and file_get_contents are very
similar. They both read an entire file, but file reads the file into
an array, while file_get_contents reads it into a string. The array
returned by file will be separated by newline, but each element will
still have the terminating newline attached, so you will still need to
watch out for that.
The fopen function does something entirely different—it opens a
file descriptor, which functions as a stream to read or write the
file. It is a much lower-level function, a simple wrapper around the C
fopen function, and simply calling fopen won't do anything but
open a stream.
Once you've open a handle to the file, you can use other functions
like fread and fwrite to manipulate the data the handle
refers to, and once you're done, you will need to close the stream by
using fclose. These give you much finer control over the file
you are reading, and if you need raw binary data, you may need to use
them, but usually you can stick with the higher-level functions.
So, to recap:
file — Reads entire file contents into an array of lines.
file_get_contents — Reads entire file contents into a string.
fopen — Opens a file handle that can be manipulated with other library functions, but does no reading or writing itself.
Credit goes to Alexis King.
I have a php script that reads text files. I use fgetc() to get every character one by one. I open file to read from with fopen(),and then I use file descriptor returned from fopen() as a first argument to fgetc(). I tried to do the same thing with reading from STDIN. I wanted to run the script in a terminal, give it the whole text (that was in a text file before) and press enter. I thought that the script would read it and will run as if it read from a text file, but it doesn't work. It only works when a type every single character alone and press enter after it. Why is that? Is there a possibility to make the script behave the way I wanted? That I can give it the whole text to the terminal at once? Should I use different functions or something?
$inputFile = fopen($path, "w");
while(($char = fgetc($inputFile)) !== false){
dosomething();
}
What I'm trying to do is to replace $inputFile in fgetc()with STDIN.
See http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.io-streams.php, second comment
Note, without the stream_set_blocking() call, fgetcsv() hangs on STDIN, awaiting input from the user, which isn't useful as we're looking for a piped file. If it isn't here already, it isn't going to be.
<?php
stream_set_blocking(STDIN, 0);
$csv_ar = fgetcsv(STDIN);
I think it's the same for fgetc. After all it
string fgetc ( resource $handle ) Gets a character from the given file pointer.
Emphasis mine.
See http://php.net/manual/en/function.fgetc.php
...
I am new to PHP, and I am not quite sure: what is the difference between the file(), file_get_contents(), and fopen() functions, and when should I use one over the other?
The first two, file and file_get_contents are very similar. They both read an entire file, but file reads the file into an array, while file_get_contents reads it into a string. The array returned by file will be separated by newline, but each element will still have the terminating newline attached, so you will still need to watch out for that.
The fopen function does something entirely different—it opens a file descriptor, which functions as a stream to read or write the file. It is a much lower-level function, a simple wrapper around the C fopen function, and simply calling fopen won't do anything but open a stream.
Once you've open a handle to the file, you can use other functions like fread and fwrite to manipulate the data the handle refers to, and once you're done, you will need to close the stream by using fclose. These give you much finer control over the file you are reading, and if you need raw binary data, you may need to use them, but usually you can stick with the higher-level functions.
So, to recap:
file — Reads entire file contents into an array of lines.
file_get_contents — Reads entire file contents into a string.
fopen — Opens a file handle that can be manipulated with other library functions, but does no reading or writing itself.
file — Reads entire file into an array
file_get_contents — Reads entire file into a string
fopen — Opens file or URL
From a comment to this answer I read that "stream_get_contents is low-level" comparing to file_get_contents. However according to Manual, stream_get_contents is
Identical to file_get_contents(), except that stream_get_contents() operates on an already open stream resource and returns the remaining contents in a string, up to maxlength bytes and starting at the specified offset.
Which statement is correct?
Is stream_get_contents really lower level and faster?
Specifically I am interested in reading local files from HD.
I'm late here but it might help others
file_get_contents() loads the file content into memory. It sits there in memory and waits for the program to call echo upon which it will be delivered to the output buffer.
A good usage example is:
echo file_get_contents('file.txt');
stream_get_contents() delivers the content on an already open stream. An example is this:
$handle = fopen('file.txt', 'w+');
echo stream_get_contents($handle);
You could see that stream_get_contents() used an existing stream created by fopen() to get the contents as a string.
file_get_contents() is the more preferred way as it doesn't depend on an open stream, and is efficient with your memory using memory mapping techniques. For external sites reading, you can also set HTTP headers when getting the content. (Refer to https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.file-get-contents.php for more info)
For larger files/resources, stream_get_contents() may be preferred as it delivers the content fractionally as opposed to file_get_contents() where the entire data is dumped in memory.
Here is my situation.Supposing I have a PHP file named as:
myfunctions.php
Is it possible to read the contents of that PHP file (myfunctions.php) in another script using available PHP functions?
I'm using the following functions without success in reading this PHP file:
file_get_contents()
file()
It simply returned blank. One of the possible successful method was to read this PHP file as text file but I do not know how to do this..If someone has some other methods, please share. Ideally I want the output to be an array so the data I would like to obtain will be easily manipulated for use.
Thanks.
If I were you, I will change the extension on the "myfunctions.php" to "myfunctions.txt" and use the theses functions
file_get_contents()
file()
But I don't know if you are allow to change the name of the document.
file() - Reads entire file into an array
fgets() - Gets line from file pointer
fread() - Binary-safe file read
readfile() - Outputs a file
file_put_contents() - Write a string to a file
stream_get_contents() - Reads remainder of a stream into a string
stream_context_create() - Creates a stream context
You need fread. To put it into an array, you might look at explode