Sr.No	Mode & Purpose
1	r Opens the file for reading only. Places the file pointer at the beginning of the file.
2	r+ Opens the file for reading and writing. Places the file pointer at the beginning of the file.
3	w Opens the file for writing only. Places the file pointer at the beginning of the file. and truncates the file to zero length. If files does not exist then it attempts to create a file.
4	w+ Opens the file for reading and writing only. Places the file pointer at the beginning of the file. and truncates the file to zero length. If files does not exist then it attempts to create a file.
5	a Opens the file for writing only. Places the file pointer at the end of the file. If files does not exist then it attempts to create a file.
6	a+ Opens the file for reading and writing only. Places the file pointer at the end of the file. If files does not exist then it attempts to create a file.

If an attempt to open a file fails then fopen returns a value of false otherwise it returns a file pointer which is used for further reading or writing to that file.

After making a changes to the opened file it is important to close it with the fclose() function. The fclose() function requires a file pointer as its argument and then returns true when the closure succeeds or false if it fails.

Reading a file

Once a file is opened using fopen() function it can be read with a function called fread(). This function requires two arguments. These must be the file pointer and the length of the file expressed in bytes.

The files length can be found using the filesize() function which takes the file name as its argument and returns the size of the file expressed in bytes.

So here are the steps required to read a file with PHP.

Open a file using fopen() function.
Get the file’s length using filesize() function.
Read the file’s content using fread() function.
Close the file with fclose() function.

The following example assigns the content of a text file to a variable then displays those contents on the web page.

<html>




   <head>

      <title>Reading a file using PHP</title>

   </head>

  

   <body>

     

      <?php

         $filename = "tmp.txt";

         $file = fopen( $filename, "r" );

        

         if( $file == false ) {

            echo ( "Error in opening file" );

            exit();

         }

         

         $filesize = filesize( $filename );

         $filetext = fread( $file, $filesize );

         fclose( $file );

        

         echo ( "File size : $filesize bytes" );

         echo ( "<pre>$filetext</pre>" );

      ?>

     

   </body>

</html>

php 8

Writing a file

A new file can be written or text can be appended to an existing file using the PHP fwrite() function. This function requires two arguments specifying a file pointer and the string of data that is to be written. Optionally a third integer argument can be included to specify the length of the data to write. If the third argument is included, writing would will stop after the specified length has been reached.

The following example creates a new text file then writes a short text heading inside it. After closing this file its existence is confirmed using file_exist() function which takes file name as an argument

<?php

   $filename = "/home/user/guest/newfile.txt";

   $file = fopen( $filename, "w" );

  

   if( $file == false ) {

      echo ( "Error in opening new file" );

      exit();

   }

   fwrite( $file, "This is  a simple test\n" );

   fclose( $file );

?>

<html>

  

   <head>

      <title>Writing a file using PHP</title>

   </head>

  

   <body>

     

      <?php

         $filename = "newfile.txt";

         $file = fopen( $filename, "r" );

        

         if( $file == false ) {

            echo ( "Error in opening file" );

            exit();

         }

        

         $filesize = filesize( $filename );

         $filetext = fread( $file, $filesize );

        

         fclose( $file );

        

         echo ( "File size : $filesize bytes" );

         echo ( "$filetext" );

         echo("file name: $filename");

      ?>

     

   </body>

</html>

It will produce the following result −

php 9

PHP – File Inclusion

You can include the content of a PHP file into another PHP file before the server executes it. There are two PHP functions which can be used to included one PHP file into another PHP file.

The include() Function
The require() Function

This is a strong point of PHP which helps in creating functions, headers, footers, or elements that can be reused on multiple pages. This will help developers to make it easy to change the layout of complete website with minimal effort. If there is any change required then instead of changing thousand of files just change included file.

The include() Function

The include() function takes all the text in a specified file and copies it into the file that uses the include function. If there is any problem in loading a file then the include() function generates a warning but the script will continue execution.

Assume you want to create a common menu for your website. Then create a file menu.php with the following content.

<a href="http://www.tecklearn.com/index.htm">Home</a> -

<a href="http://www.tecklearn.com/ebxml">ebXML</a> -

<a href="http://www.tecklearn.com/ajax">AJAX</a> -

<a href="http://www.tecklearn.com/perl">PERL</a> <br />

Now create as many pages as you like and include this file to create header. For example now your test.php file can have following content.

<html>

   <body>

  

      <?php include("menu.php"); ?>

      <p>This is an example to show how to include PHP file!</p>

     

   </body>

</html>

It will produce the following result −

php 10

The require() Function

The require() function takes all the text in a specified file and copies it into the file that uses the include function. If there is any problem in loading a file then the require() function generates a fatal error and halt the execution of the script.

So there is no difference in require() and include() except they handle error conditions. It is recommended to use the require() function instead of include(), because scripts should not continue executing if files are missing or misnamed.

You can try using above example with require() function and it will generate same result. But if you will try following two examples where file does not exist then you will get different results.

<html>

   <body>

  

      <?php include("xxmenu.php"); ?>

      <p>This is an example to show how to include wrong PHP file!</p>

     

   </body>

</html>

This will produce the following result −

This is an example to show how to include wrong PHP file!

Now lets try same example with require() function.

<html>

   <body>

      

       <?php require("xxmenu.php"); ?>

       <p>This is an example to show how to include wrong PHP file!</p>

  

   </body>

</html>

This time file execution halts and nothing is displayed.

NOTE − You may get plain warning messages or fatal error messages or nothing at all. This depends on your PHP Server configuration.

So, this brings us to the end of blog. This Tecklearn ‘File Handling in PHP’ blog helps you with commonly asked questions if you are looking out for a job in PHP Programming. If you wish to learn Java and build a career Java Programming domain, then check out our interactive, Java and JEE Training, that comes with 24*7 support to guide you throughout your learning period. Please find the link for course details:

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Introduction to Java

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Installation of Java
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Introduction to multi-threading in Java
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File Handling in Java

Input Output Streams
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Java Collections

Wrapper Classes and Inner Classes: Integer, Character, Boolean, Float etc
Applet Programs: How to write UI programs with Applet, Java.lang, Java.io, Java.util
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Introduction to SQL: Connect, Insert, Update, Delete, Select
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Java Enterprise Edition – Servlets

Introduction to J2EE
Client Server architecture
URL, Port Number, Request, Response
Need for servlets
Servlet fundamentals
Setting up a web project in Eclipse
Configuring and running the web app with servlets
GET and POST request in web application with demo
Servlet lifecycle
Servlets Continued
Session tracking and filter
Forward and include Servlet request dispatchers

Java Server Pages (JSP)

Fundamentals of Java Server Page
Writing a code using JSP
The architecture of JSP
JSP Continued
JSP elements: Scriptlets, expressions, declaration
JSP standard actions
JSP directives
Introduction to JavaBeans
ServletConfig and ServletContext
Servlet Chaining
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Hibernate features
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POJO (Plain Old Java Object)
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