Read Files With PHP

Read Files With PHP

There are two useful methods to read files with PHP, that will be covered in this PHP Tutorial. The first method is using the fread function, this method requires a combination of the functions: fopen, fread, and fclose functions. The file_get_contents function is used in the second method that will be covered – it eliminates the need to call multiple functions to read a file in PHP.

When using both of the methods covered in this PHP Tutorial, the file will be read to a string – this can be saved in a variable for later use – reading files into variables is not always necessary, sometimes you can use the returned data from the file directly.

Read file in PHP – the Fread Function

As was mentioned earlier, the fread function uses a combination of: fopen, fread, and fclose. The file is first opened for reading using fopen with the r mode – this mode will open the file for reading, and place the pointer at the beginning of the file.

<?php
$filename = "My-File.txt";
$filesize = filesize($filename);
$handle = fopen($filename, "r");
$contents = fread($handle, $filesize);
fclose($handle);
echo $contents;
?>

The second argument in the fread function, is the number of bytes where we want PHP to stop reading – in this case, the file size of the file we are going to read.

Get Content of file in PHP - the File_get_contents Function

Using the file_get_contents function to read files with may be easier than using fread and its accompanied functions.

<?php
$file = "my-beloved-text-file.txt";
$FileContent = file_get_contents($file)

echo $FileContent;
?>