THE WORLD'S LARGEST WEB DEVELOPER SITE

PHP Tutorial

PHP HOME PHP Intro PHP Install PHP Syntax PHP Comments PHP Variables PHP Echo / Print PHP Data Types PHP Strings PHP Numbers PHP Constants PHP Operators PHP If...Else...Elseif PHP Switch PHP Loops PHP Functions PHP Arrays PHP Superglobals

PHP Forms

PHP Form Handling PHP Form Validation PHP Form Required PHP Form URL/E-mail PHP Form Complete

PHP Advanced

PHP Date and Time PHP Include PHP File Handling PHP File Open/Read PHP File Create/Write PHP File Upload PHP Cookies PHP Sessions PHP Filters PHP Filters Advanced PHP JSON

PHP OOP

PHP What is OOP PHP Classes/Objects PHP Constructor PHP Destructor PHP Access Modifiers PHP Inheritance PHP Constants PHP Abstract Classes PHP Traits PHP Static Methods PHP Static Properties

MySQL Database

MySQL Database MySQL Connect MySQL Create DB MySQL Create Table MySQL Insert Data MySQL Get Last ID MySQL Insert Multiple MySQL Prepared MySQL Select Data MySQL Where MySQL Order By MySQL Delete Data MySQL Update Data MySQL Limit Data

PHP XML

PHP XML Parsers PHP SimpleXML Parser PHP SimpleXML - Get PHP XML Expat PHP XML DOM

PHP - AJAX

AJAX Intro AJAX PHP AJAX Database AJAX XML AJAX Live Search AJAX Poll

PHP Examples

PHP Examples PHP Quiz PHP Exercises PHP Certificate

PHP Reference

PHP Overview PHP Array PHP Calendar PHP Date PHP Directory PHP Error PHP Filesystem PHP Filter PHP FTP PHP JSON PHP Libxml PHP Mail PHP Math PHP Misc PHP MySQLi PHP Network PHP SimpleXML PHP Stream PHP String PHP Variable Handling PHP XML Parser PHP Zip PHP Timezones

PHP File Create/Write


In this chapter we will teach you how to create and write to a file on the server.


PHP Create File - fopen()

The fopen() function is also used to create a file. Maybe a little confusing, but in PHP, a file is created using the same function used to open files.

If you use fopen() on a file that does not exist, it will create it, given that the file is opened for writing (w) or appending (a).

The example below creates a new file called "testfile.txt". The file will be created in the same directory where the PHP code resides:

Example

$myfile = fopen("testfile.txt", "w")


PHP File Permissions

If you are having errors when trying to get this code to run, check that you have granted your PHP file access to write information to the hard drive.


PHP Write to File - fwrite()

The fwrite() function is used to write to a file.

The first parameter of fwrite() contains the name of the file to write to and the second parameter is the string to be written.

The example below writes a couple of names into a new file called "newfile.txt":

Example

<?php
$myfile = fopen("newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
$txt = "John Doe\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
$txt = "Jane Doe\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
?>

Notice that we wrote to the file "newfile.txt" twice. Each time we wrote to the file we sent the string $txt that first contained "John Doe" and second contained "Jane Doe". After we finished writing, we closed the file using the fclose() function.

If we open the "newfile.txt" file it would look like this:

John Doe
Jane Doe


PHP Overwriting

Now that "newfile.txt" contains some data we can show what happens when we open an existing file for writing. All the existing data will be ERASED and we start with an empty file.

In the example below we open our existing file "newfile.txt", and write some new data into it:

Example

<?php
$myfile = fopen("newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
$txt = "Mickey Mouse\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
$txt = "Minnie Mouse\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
?>

If we now open the "newfile.txt" file, both John and Jane have vanished, and only the data we just wrote is present:

Mickey Mouse
Minnie Mouse

Complete PHP Filesystem Reference

For a complete reference of filesystem functions, go to our complete PHP Filesystem Reference.