PHP Cookbook

18.4. Reading from Standard Input

Problem

You want to read from standard input.

Solution

Use fopen( ) to open php://stdin:

$fh = fopen('php://stdin','r') or die($php_errormsg);
while($s = fgets($fh,1024)) {
    print "You typed: $s";
}

Discussion

Section 20.4 discusses reading data from the keyboard in a command-line context. Reading data from standard input isn’t very useful in a web context, because information doesn’t arrive via standard input. The bodies of HTTP POST and file-upload requests are parsed by PHP and put into special variables. They can’t be read on standard input, as they can in some web server and CGI implementations.

See Also

Section 20.4 for reading from the keyboard in a command-line context; documentation on fopen( ) at http://www.php.net/fopen.