PHP File Write

PHP File Write

Now that you know how to open and close a file, lets get on to the most useful part of file manipulation, writing! There is really only one main function that is used to write and it's logically called fwrite.

PHP File Open Write

Before we can write information to our test file we have to use the function fopen to open the file for writing.

$file= "testFile.txt";

$fh = fopen($file, 'w');

 

PHP File Write file write Function

We can use php to write to a text file. The fwrite function allows data to be written to any type of file. Fwrite's first parameter is the file handle and its second parameter is the string of data that is to be written.

Below we are writing a couple of names into our test file testFile.txt and separating them with a carriaged return.

$myFile = "testFile.txt";

$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");

$stringData = "Bobby Bopper n";

fwrite($fh, $stringData);

$stringData = "Tracy Tanner n";

fwrite($fh, $stringData);

fclose($fh);

 

The $fh variable contains the file handle for testFile.txt. The file handle knows the current file pointer, which for writing, starts out at the beginning of the file.

We wrote to the file testFile.txt twice. Each time we wrote to the file we sent the string $stringData that first contained Bobby Bopper and second contained Tracy Tanner. After we finished writing we closed the file using the fclose function.

PHP File Write Overwriting

Now that testFile.txt contains some data we can demonstrate what happens when you open an existing file for writing. All the data contained in the file is wiped clean and you start with an empty file.

$myFile = "testFile.txt";

$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");

$stringData = "Floppy Jalopy n";

fwrite($fh, $stringData);

$stringData = "Pointy Pinto n";

fwrite($fh, $stringData);

fclose($fh);

 

If you now open the testFile.txt file you will see that Bobby and Tracy have both vanished, as we expected, and only the data we just wrote is present.