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PHP Programming
By James N Hitz
Reading From Files With fread()
Reading file contents is done using the fread() function as follows:
$fileContents = fread("file_to_read", bytes_to_read);
The first argument - "file_to_read" is a file handle pointing to a previously opened file (of course you can't read a closed file).
PS: "file_to_read" is a file pointer (filehandle) and NOT a file name!!
The second argument (bytes_to_read) specifies how much content you want to read from a file. If you want to read the entire file and you don't know how big it is, use PHP's filesize():
$filesize = filesize(filename)
Here the filesize() function expects you to specify the filename AND NOT the filehandle (file pointer). This will need a little getting used to.
Lets take an example.
The following example opens a file, reads the contents and prints them out, before finally closing the file:
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>using data files with PHP</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY bgcolor="black" text="white">
<?php
$file2access="/www/home/list.txt"; //our data file.
if(!$filehandle = fopen($file2access,'r')){
print "Error. Could not open $file2access in read only mode";
}else {
/* file opened ok. Read contents but first get file size */
$contents = fread($filehandle,$filesize);
print "The contents of <B>$file2access</B>are:<BR>".
"<BLOCKQUOTE><B>$contents</B></BLOCKUOTE>";
//close file
if(!fclose ($filehandle)){
print "<P>Error. Cannot close file <b>$file2access</b>";
}
}
?>
<BODY></HTML>
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