PHP: file function - Reads entire file into an array

Description

array file ( string $filename [, int $flags [, 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 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 Stream Functions.

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
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('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.