Read file into array

Read file content: file()

If you want to be able to read a file, you can use the file() function. It puts the file contents into an array so you can work with it line by line or as a list. Assuming you have a list of countries in a text (.txt) file and you need to display the list, you can use the file() function to read the file and convert it to an array.

Here’s an example:

$countries = file('countries.txt');

print_r($countries);

The text file content:

Australia
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
........

In the example above, the output would be:

Array ( [0] => Australia [1] => Afghanistan [2] => Albania [3] => Algeria ........ )

The file() function parameters

The file() function has three parameters which are passed as arguments.

file ( $filename , $flags , $context )

• $filename: is the path to the file.
• $flags: is an optional parameter that can be one or more of the constants.
• $context: allows you to specify a context for the file handle.

Below are the file constants:

Flag	Description
FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH	Search for the file in the include path.
FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES	Skip the newline at the end of the array element.
FILE_SKIP_EMPTY_LINES	Skip empty lines in the file.

Adding options and context

// Retrieving the content of the current PHP file
print_r(file(__FILE__));

// You can retrieve remote files also
print_r(file('https://cdn.wsform.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/color_web_safe.csv'));

//If you need to set some header, you can use the "context"
$opts = [
    'http' => [
        'method' => "GET",
        'header' => "Accept-language: en\r\n" .
            "Cookie: foo=bar\r\n"
    ]
];
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
print_r(file(
    filename: 'https://cdn.wsform.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/color_web_safe.csv',
    context: $context
));

File types that can be handled

Various file types can be handled by the file() function, including:

• Text files (*.txt): These are standard text files that contain plain, unformatted text.
• CSV files (*.csv): These are comma-separated values files that contain tabular data.
• HTML files (*.html, *.htm): These files contain HTML markup and can be read into an array.
• XML files (*.xml): These are files that contain structured data in the XML format.
• Log files (*.log): These are text-based files used to store a record of events or messages.
• Config files (*.config, *.ini, etc.): These are files that store configuration data in a specific format.

File extensions are not a restriction on the file() function. In general it can read any text-based file. The result might not be as expected if the file contains binary data or non-textual data.