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PHP comes with a couple of different ways to read the contents of file.
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; ?>
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; } ?>
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.
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); ?>
There are 4 functions to include external PHP files.
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.