Diving into PHP: Day 12

We’ll take a short break from working with MySQL in order to analyze how to work with the file system. Today, you’ll learn how to use the “file” function, as well as “fopen”, “fgets”, and “fputs”.

Day 12: Files

Be sure to click on the “Full Screen Toggle”.

Download the Source Code



38

Comments

Jeffrey

Hi, I'm Jeff. I'm the editor of Nettuts+, and the Site Manager of Theme Forest. I spend too much time in front of the computer and find myself telling my fiance', "We'll go in 5 minutes!" far too often. I just can't go out to dinner while I'm still producing FireBug errors...drives me crazy. I love jQuery, PHP, MYSQL, CSS, AJAX - pretty much anything.


  • Krum says:
    March 10, 2009 at 8:30 am

    Woo… first comment. Jeff you’re awesome!

  • Ilyes Kechidi says:
    March 10, 2009 at 9:42 am

    and another wonderful tut , thanks Jeff

  • Ed Baxter (Web Sheffield) says:
    March 10, 2009 at 10:12 am

    Good Stuff :D

  • demogar says:
    March 10, 2009 at 10:42 am

    Nice to see you using e-text editor :)
    Did you like it?
    Take a look at the php and html bundles for the next time… they will save you more time :)
    For example, if you wanna write a parragraph, ul, li, and so just ALT+< or if you wanna make a foreach jusft foreach+tab.
    Really great tut as ever

  • Jeff Adams says:
    March 10, 2009 at 10:46 am

    Nice tutorial! I have to admit I prefer the PHP and MYSQL tutorials, but these are extremely useful for me. I did a simple file upload thing for my website, that didnt work out half as well sa this lol.

  • Meshach says:
    March 10, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    I’m learning PHP… Oh yeah!!!!!!

    Thanks Jeff, you’re awesome!

  • Fawaz says:
    March 10, 2009 at 12:24 pm

    Damm you Jeffrey, where were you when I was learning this stuff?
    You make it so easy.

    btw: this is great mind refresher.

  • Randy says:
    March 10, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    Great tut as always! Maybe in the next tut you could explain when .txt files are better to use than a database when storing information?

    Thanks!!!

  • Jeff Adams says:
    March 10, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    @ Meshach – read your comment right after I posted, for a momment I got big headed and thought you were talking to me lol.

    To Jeff Way – how do you even find the time do all this stuff!!!!:?

  • Joe says:
    March 10, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    Jeff,

    we all cannot appreciate you enough for this great work. Like i always end my comments, God bless you man. Hey as part of the more advanced php tuts that you will be doing is LDAP going to feature? using LDAP for single login to applications would be awesome.

  • Jeffrey Way says:
    March 10, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    Thanks, guys. I’m glad to hear it’s helping. This stuff is hard! Videos help. :)

  • Dan says:
    March 11, 2009 at 8:14 am

    Excellent tutorial as always.

    One criticism I have though is that it’s quite annoying that you change text editors so often. It really harms the consistency and continuity of the series.

    Dan

  • Scott says:
    March 11, 2009 at 8:32 am

    Thanks Jeff, I’ve been enjoying your tutorials for months and haven’t thanked you yet.

    Are you planning on covering uploading things like audio files or video?

    Thanks again
    Scott

  • Jeffrey Way says:
    March 11, 2009 at 8:33 am

    @Dan – I disagree. I think it allows the newer users to take a look at many different editors….to make up their own mind.

  • Alloid says:
    March 11, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Wow. tnx!

  • Ned says:
    March 11, 2009 at 11:20 am

    I’ve been following this series from the begining and i appreciate editor changes ! I agree with you, it’s nice to open our work space to different tools and i’ve discovered many, since i’ve been watching.
    Thank’s a lot Jeffrey.

    A french fan !
    Ned

  • Matt says:
    March 11, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    @Jeffry Way – You have caused me to buy a new editor today, but I LOVE IT! Been looking for something like this for awhile now. Had to ditch my Pro for various reasons, and could never find anything equivalent to TextMate (in terms of look, feel, etc.)

    Danke!

  • yuki says:
    March 11, 2009 at 7:42 pm

    awesome! waiting for 13

    Thank’s a lot Jeffrey.

  • Jeffrey says:
    March 11, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    @Matt – Enjoy it! Check out the bundles and “Control Alt P”.

  • ASHWIN HEGDE says:
    March 12, 2009 at 7:21 am

    excellent Job.

  • Showpage says:
    March 12, 2009 at 8:18 am

    Ehi! Thanks for this but where are the others lessons? I’ve found only from here to lesson number 10!
    Please let me know

  • Showpage says:
    March 12, 2009 at 9:42 am

    Sorry I’ve seen the links to the others videos right now!
    Thanks a lot

  • iPaul Pro says:
    March 12, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    Hey all, I have a quick question:

    Jeff talks about storing only “smaller files” into the memory, when using fopen. I was wondering if anyone knew how big a file can be before one MUST separate the file, line-by-line. I’m developing a CSS formatting and optimizing WordPress plugin, and want to know the limitations.

    Should I be worried about files <100kb in size?

    Thanks, in advance.

  • Meshach says:
    March 13, 2009 at 6:04 pm

    @Jeffrey:

    Thanks so much for these screen casts!

  • AB AB says:
    March 14, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    What is the file is very large and contains only one line?

  • Charlie says:
    March 25, 2009 at 10:07 pm

    Hey! Awesome tutorial. Could anyone tell me what the editor is that is shown in the video?

    Thanks!

  • B-RAD says:
    March 26, 2009 at 11:12 am

    Hey Jeff…I’ve followed along your screencast for the past week, daily…literally. I feel like I owe you a debt but I’ve tried and tried to subscribe to this RSS feed and cant figure it out for the hell of it. I dont have any of those readers im registered with and don’t really understand the concept of WHAT it is? It doesnt have just a place to put your email so its obviously not a mailing list. You probably dont have to answer this personally theres over 6000+ users and SOMEBODY HELP ME OUT PLEASE! I’m not computer illiterate so you can be brief! Thanks!

  • wrerm says:
    March 27, 2009 at 10:22 pm

    Jeff quick question…in the 1st example why did we use $fp = file(file.txt); and not $fp = file_get_contents(file.txt)….?

  • Nick says:
    March 31, 2009 at 10:24 am

    I would love if you could do a tutorial that go thru the basics of handling xml files.

    Keep up the good work, I love these tutorials

    /Nick

  • tarek says:
    April 3, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    it’s gonna amazing and helpfull ,even if i haven’t seen it yet ,but i assume that because i know you are a skilled guy Jeffery.
    i read an article on nettuts about the oop ,but still can’t figure out what’s this ,is it something hard to understand ?
    or because as a beginner its normal to see it like that???

  • PAUL says:
    April 11, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Jeffery! I am really looking forward to see what comes next. Could you show us how to create a user registration?

    Thank you so much for taking the time to go over this stuff with us.
    I ordered your recommendation, PHP Solutions.

    Regards,

    Paul

  • PAUL says:
    April 11, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Thanks Jeff! I cant wait for day 13.

    I have been reading 3 different PHP books and this makes learning
    it more efficient than all of them.

    Thanks again,

    Paul

  • SK says:
    April 14, 2009 at 8:11 am

    I’m a seriouse beginner and im having trouble echoing out the file into my browser in index3.php

    Any Help?

  • Scott Dunstan says:
    April 28, 2009 at 5:04 pm

    Well done Jeff, great site, great tuts.

  • Joshua says:
    May 24, 2009 at 4:03 am

    @jeffrey way. Does this only work in .txt files?

  • Julia Borsos says:
    June 9, 2009 at 7:25 am

    @Jeffrey
    Thank you so much!
    I needed this for a project and it cleared up this ‘fopen’ topic so well for me.

    Also about the text editors, I like that you use different types of software, it’s good to see so many different approaches to writing php!

    Keep it up :D

  • Jason says:
    July 29, 2009 at 10:16 am

    Are there not going to be any more of these?

  • Dan says:
    July 31, 2009 at 1:22 am

    @Jason

    He has made more, he’s gone up to 16: http://blog.themeforest.net/tutorials/diving-into-php-day-16/ :)