file
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
file — Reads entire file into an array
Description
Reads an entire file into an array.
Note: You can use file_get_contents() to return the contents of a file as a string.
Parameters
- filename
-
Path to the file.
TipYou can use a URL as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. See fopen() for more details on how to specify the filename and List of Supported Protocols/Wrappers for a list of supported URL protocols.
- flags
-
The optional parameter flags can be one, or more, of the following constants:
- FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH
- Search for the file in the include_path.
- FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES
- Do not add newline at the end of each array element
- FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES
- Skip empty lines
- FILE_TEXT
- The content is returned in UTF-8 encoding. You can specify a different encoding by creating a custom context. This flag cannot be used with FILE_BINARY. This flag is only available since PHP 6.
- FILE_BINARY
- The content is read as binary data. This is the default setting and cannot be used with FILE_TEXT. This flag is only available since PHP 6.
- context
-
A context resource created with the stream_context_create() function.
Note: Context support was added with PHP 5.0.0. For a description of contexts, refer to Streams.
Return Values
Returns the file in an array. Each element of the array corresponds to a line in the file, with the newline still attached. Upon failure, file() returns FALSE.
Note: Each line in the resulting array will include the line ending, unless FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES is used, so you still need to use rtrim() if you do not want the line ending present.
Note: If you are having problems with PHP not recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, you might want to enable the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option.
ChangeLog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 6.0.0 | Added support for the FILE_TEXT and FILE_BINARY flags. |
| 5.0.0 | The context parameter was added |
| 5.0.0 | Prior to PHP 5.0.0 the flags parameter only covered include_path and was enabled with 1 |
| 4.3.0 | file() became binary safe |
Examples
Example#1 file() example
<?php
// Get a file into an array. In this example we'll go through HTTP to get
// the HTML source of a URL.
$lines = file('https://www.example.com/');
// Loop through our array, show HTML source as HTML source; and line numbers too.
foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
echo "Line #<b>{$line_num}</b> : " . htmlspecialchars($line) . "<br />\n";
}
// Another example, let's get a web page into a string. See also file_get_contents().
$html = implode('', file('https://www.example.com/'));
?>
Notes
When using SSL, Microsoft IIS will violate the protocol by closing the connection without sending a close_notify indicator. PHP will report this as "SSL: Fatal Protocol Error" when you reach the end of the data. To workaround this, you should lower your error_reporting level not to include warnings. PHP 4.3.7 and higher can detect buggy IIS server software when you open the stream using the https:// wrapper and will suppress the warning for you. If you are using fsockopen() to create an ssl:// socket, you are responsible for detecting and suppressing the warning yourself.