PHP File Handling Introduction
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Opening Files with fopen()
PHP can read from and write to files on the server's filesystem, letting a script persist data, log activity, or generate downloadable content without needing a database for every task.
Example: Opening Files with fopen()
<?php
$handle = fopen("data.txt", "w");
if ($handle) {
echo "File opened successfully";
fclose($handle);
}
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Writing Files with fwrite()
File operations in PHP revolve around a small set of core functions — fopen(), fread()/fwrite(), and fclose() — that mirror the open-use-close pattern found in most programming languages' file APIs.
Example: Writing Files with fwrite()
<?php
$handle = fopen("data.txt", "w");
fwrite($handle, "Hello, file!");
fclose($handle);
echo file_get_contents("data.txt");
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Closing Files with fclose()
Always check whether a file operation succeeded, since fopen() returns false (not an exception) on failure by default, and code that assumes success will produce confusing errors further down the line.
Example: Closing Files with fclose()
<?php
$handle = fopen("data.txt", "w");
if ($handle === false) {
echo "Failed to open file";
} else {
fwrite($handle, "Saved data");
fclose($handle);
echo "File written and closed";
}
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Checking File Existence
File permissions and paths matter a lot in real deployments: PHP's process needs OS-level permission to read or write a given path, and a misconfigured permission is one of the most common file-handling bugs in production.
Example: Checking File Existence
<?php
file_put_contents("data.txt", "sample");
if (file_exists("data.txt") && is_writable("data.txt")) {
echo "File exists and is writable";
}
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Deleting Files with unlink()
Beyond the low-level functions, PHP offers convenience wrappers like file_get_contents() and file_put_contents() that handle the open/read-or-write/close sequence in a single call for simple cases.
Example: Deleting Files with unlink()
<?php
file_put_contents("temp.txt", "temporary data");
echo file_get_contents("temp.txt") . "\n";
unlink("temp.txt");
echo file_exists("temp.txt") ? "Still exists" : "Deleted successfully";
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