file

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

fileReads entire file into an array

Description

array file ( string $filename [, int $flags = 0 [, resource $context ]] )

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.

Tip

A URL can be used as a filename with this function if the fopen wrappers have been enabled. See fopen() for more details on how to specify the filename. See the Supported Protocols and Wrappers for links to information about what abilities the various wrappers have, notes on their usage, and information on any predefined variables they may provide.

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

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 PHP is not properly recognizing the line endings when reading files either on or created by a Macintosh computer, enabling the auto_detect_line_endings run-time configuration option may help resolve the problem.

Changelog

Version Description
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('http://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('http://www.example.com/'));

// Using the optional flags parameter since PHP 5
$trimmed file('somefile.txt'FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES);
?>

Notes

Warning

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 work around this, the value of error_reporting should be lowered to a level that does not 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. When using fsockopen() to create an ssl:// socket, the developer is responsible for detecting and suppressing this warning.

See Also

Коментарии

Note: Now that file() is binary safe it is 'much' slower than it used to be. If you are planning to read large files it may be worth your while using fgets() instead of file() For example:

<?php
$fd 
fopen ("log_file.txt""r");
while (!
feof ($fd)) 
{
   
$buffer fgets($fd4096);
   
$lines[] = $buffer;
}
fclose ($fd);
?>

The resulting array is $lines.

I did a test on a 200,000 line file. It took seconds with fgets()  compared to minutes with file().
2003-03-20 11:36:27
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Using file() for reading large text files > 10 Mb gives problems, therefore you should use this instead. It is much slower but it works fine. $lines will return an array with all the lines.

<?php
$handle 
= @fopen('yourfile...'"r");
if (
$handle) {
   while (!
feof($handle)) {
       
$lines[] = fgets($handle4096);
   }
   
fclose($handle);
}
?>
2006-11-28 02:33:13
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
This note applies to PHP 5.1.6 under Windows (although may apply to other versions).

It appears that the 'FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES' flag doesn't remove newlines properly when reading Windows-style text files, i.e. files whose lines end in '\r\n'.

Solution: Always use 'rtrim()' in preference to 'FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES'.
2007-07-12 05:25:59
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
If you're getting "failed to open stream: Permission denied" when trying to use either file() or fopen() to access files on another server. Check your host doesn't have any firewall restrictions in-place which prevent outbound connections. This is the case with my host Aplus.net
2008-02-16 03:15:40
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
A user suggested using rtrim always, due to the line ending conflict with files that have an EOL that differs from the server EOL.

Using rtrim with it's default character replacement is a bad solution though, as it removes all whitespace in addition to the '\r' and '\n' characters.

A good solution using rtrim follows:

<?php
$line 
rtrim($line"\r\n") . PHP_EOL;
?>

This removes only EOL characters, and replaces with the server's EOL character, thus making preg_* work fine when matching the EOL ($)
2008-04-16 04:03:49
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Автор:
this may be obvious, but it took me a while to figure out what I was doing wrong. So I wanted to share. I have a file on my "c:\" drive. How do I file() it? 

Don't forget the backslash is special and you have to "escape" the backslash i.e. "\\":

<?php

$lines 
file("C:\\Documents and Settings\\myfile.txt");

foreach(
$lines as $line)
{
    echo(
$line);
}

?> 

hope this helps...
2009-10-14 18:47:11
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
read from CSV data (file) into an array with named keys

... with or without 1st row = header (keys) 
(see 4th parameter of function call as  true / false) 

<?php 
// --------------------------------------------------------------

function csv_in_array($url,$delm=";",$encl="\"",$head=false) { 
   
   
$csvxrow file($url);   // ---- csv rows to array ----
   
   
$csvxrow[0] = chop($csvxrow[0]); 
   
$csvxrow[0] = str_replace($encl,'',$csvxrow[0]); 
   
$keydata explode($delm,$csvxrow[0]); 
   
$keynumb count($keydata); 
   
    if (
$head === true) { 
   
$anzdata count($csvxrow); 
   
$z=0
    for(
$x=1$x<$anzdata$x++) { 
       
$csvxrow[$x] = chop($csvxrow[$x]); 
       
$csvxrow[$x] = str_replace($encl,'',$csvxrow[$x]); 
       
$csv_data[$x] = explode($delm,$csvxrow[$x]); 
       
$i=0
        foreach(
$keydata as $key) { 
           
$out[$z][$key] = $csv_data[$x][$i]; 
           
$i++;
            }   
       
$z++;
        }
    }
    else { 
       
$i=0;
        foreach(
$csvxrow as $item) { 
           
$item chop($item); 
           
$item str_replace($encl,'',$item); 
           
$csv_data explode($delm,$item); 
            for (
$y=0$y<$keynumb$y++) { 
               
$out[$i][$y] = $csv_data[$y]; 
            }
       
$i++;
        }
    }

return 
$out
}

// --------------------------------------------------------------

?>

fuction call with 4 parameters: 

(1) = the file with CSV data (url / string)
(2) = colum delimiter (e.g: ; or | or , ...)
(3) = values enclosed by (e.g: ' or " or ^ or ...)
(4) = with or without 1st row = head (true/false) 

<?php

// ----- call ------ 
$csvdata csv_in_array$yourcsvfile";""\""true ); 
// ----------------- 

// ----- view ------ 
echo "<pre>\r\n"
print_r($csvdata);
echo 
"</pre>\r\n"
// -----------------

?>

PS: also see: http://php.net/manual/de/function.fgetcsv.php to read CSV data into an array
... and other file-handling methods 

^
2011-09-13 15:33:51
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
To write all the lines of the file in other words to read the file line by line you can write the code like this:
<?php
$names
=file('name.txt');
// To check the number of lines 
echo count($names).'<br>';
foreach(
$names as $name)
{
   echo 
$name.'<br>';
}
?>

this example is so basic to understand how it's working. I hope it will help many beginners.

Regards,
Bingo
2013-10-14 15:36:50
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Автор:
("file()'s problem with UTF-16" is wrong. This is updated.
The former may miss the last line of the string.)

file() seems to have a problem in handling 
UTF-16 with or without BOM.

file() is likely to think "\n"=LF (0A) as a line-ending.
So, not only "000A" but also "010A, 020A,...,FE0A, FF0A,..."
are regarded as line-endings.

Moreover, file() causes a serious problem in UTF-16LE.
file() loses first "0A" (the first half of "0A00")!
And the next line begins with "00" (the rest of "0A00").
So lines after the first "0A" are totally different.

To avoid this phenomena,
eg. in case (php_script : UTF-8 , file : UTF-16 with line-ending "\r\n"),

<?php

mb_regex_encoding
('UTF-16');    // to help mb_ereg_..() work properly
$str file_get_contents($file_path);
$to_encoding 'UTF-16';        // encoding of string
$from_encoding 'UTF-8';        // encoding of PHP_script
$pattern1 mb_convert_encoding('[^\r]*\r\n'$to_encoding$from_encoding);
mb_ereg_search_init($str$pattern1);
while (
$res mb_ereg_search_regs()) {
   
$file[] = $res[0];
}
$pattern2 mb_convert_encoding('\A.*\r\n(.*)\z'$to_encoding$from_encoding);
mb_ereg($pattern2$str$match);
   
$file[] = $match[1];

?>

instead of 
$file = file($file_path);

If line-ending is "\n",
$pattern1 = mb_convert_encoding('[^\n]*\n', $to_encoding, $from_encoding);
2013-12-25 18:31:35
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Here's my CSV converter
supports Header and trims all fields
Note: Headers must be not empty!

<?php

function csv2array($file$delim ';'$encl '"'$header false) {
   
   
# File does not exist
   
if(!file_exists($file))
        return 
false;
   
   
# Read lines of file to array
   
$file_lines file($fileFILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES);
   
   
# Empty file
   
if($file_lines === array())
        return 
NULL;
   
   
# Read headers if you want to
   
if($header === true) {
       
$line_header array_shift($file_lines);
       
$array_header array_map('trim'str_getcsv($line_header$delim$encl));
    }

   
$out NULL;

   
# Now line per line (strings)
   
foreach ($file_lines as $line) {
       
# Skip empty lines
       
if(trim($line) === '')
            continue;
       
       
# Convert line to array
       
$array_fields array_map('trim'str_getcsv($line$delim$encl));
       
       
# If header present, combine header and fields as key => value
       
if($header === true)
           
$out[] = array_combine ($array_header$array_fields);
        else
           
$out[] = $array_fields;
    }
   
    return 
$out;
}
?>
2014-06-17 10:54:23
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Автор:
If the file you are reading is in CSV format do not use file(), use fgetcsv().  file() will split the file by each newline that it finds, even newlines that appear within a field (i.e. within quotations).
2014-08-05 19:38:20
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Автор:
Using if ( file(name.txt) ) might not be enough for testing if the file was successfully opened for reading because the file could be empty in which case the array returned is empty, so test instead with !==. e.g.:

$file_array = file('test.txt'); // an empty file

echo '<pre>';
if ( $file_array ) {
    # code...
    echo "success\n";
} else {
    # code...
    echo "failure\n"; // executed
}

if ( $file_array !== false ) {
    # code...
    echo "success\n"; // executed
} else {
    # code...
    echo "failure\n";
}
echo '</pre>';

result:
failure
success
2017-06-01 16:32:02
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
My experience is that the function file does uses the cached content if the file has changed....
2018-10-04 19:34:21
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
As of PHP 5.6 the file(), file_get_contents(), and fopen() functions will return false if you are referencing a source URL that doesn't have a valid SSL certificate. Presumably, you will run into this a lot in your development environments this will drive you crazy. 

You will need to create a stream context and provide it as an argument to the various file operations to tell it to ignore invalid SSL credentials. 

$args = array("ssl"=>array("verify_peer"=>false,"verify_peer_name"=>false),"http"=>array('timeout' => 60, 'user_agent' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/3.0.0.1'));

$context = stream_context_create($args);
$httpfile = file($url, false, $context);
2019-05-30 01:25:18
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html
Be aware that using file() to count lines can cause OOM on the server as it'll allocate all lines into an array.

If you're dealing with files that can have thousands of lines, SplFileObject might be a better idea and with little changes you can get the same result.
2021-04-28 21:37:06
http://php5.kiev.ua/manual/ru/function.file.html

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