Advanced PHP for Web Professionals

Opening and Closing Files

Opening Files

Before you can use PHP to read a file, you must first open it. To open a file, you use the fopen() function.

$file_handler = fopen($file, $mode) 

You must assign the function to a variable, as above. This is referred to as a file pointer. You use the file pointer to reference the open file throughout your script.

The fopen() function takes two arguments:

• $file is the name (and path, if required) of the file.

• $mode is one of a list of available modes:

  • r— Open the file as read-only. You cannot write anything to the file. Reading begins at the beginning of the file.

  • r+ — Open the file for reading and writing. Reading and writing begin at the beginning of the file. You will delete existing contents if you write ...