PHP : Function Reference : Filesystem Functions : fopen PHP Examples Tutorials References

With this it isn't possible to get data from another port than 80 (and 443) - at least for me. Because of that I've made this function who gets data from every port you want using HTTP: <?php; function getcontent($server, $port, $file) { $cont = ""; $ip = gethostbyname($server); $fp = fsockopen($ip, $port); if (!$fp) { return "Unknown"; } else { $com = "GET $file HTTP/1.1\r\nAccept: */*\r\nAccept-Language: de-ch\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\r\nUser-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)\r\nHost: $server:$port\r\nConnection: Keep-Alive\r\n\r\n"; fputs($fp, $com); while (!feof($fp)) { $cont .= fread($fp, 500); } fclose($fp); $cont = substr($cont, strpos($cont, "\r\n\r\n") + 4); return $cont; } } echo getcontent("www.myhost.com", "81", "/")); ?> Works fine for me. Had to do this especially for a shoutcast server, which only delivered the HTML-file if the user-agent was given.

While PHP does not have a function to insert text into the middle of a file, it is not that complicated to do. <?php function addRSSItem($rssFile, $firstItem, $item){ // Backup file if(!copy($rssFile, 'backup.rss')) die('Backup failed!'); // Store file contents in array $arrFile = file($rssFile); // Open file for output if(($fh = fopen($rssFile,'w')) === FALSE){ die('Failed to open file for writing!'); } // Set counters $currentLine = 0; $cntFile = count($arrFile); // Write contents, inserting $item as first item while( $currentLine <= $cntFile ){ if($currentLine == $firstItem) fwrite($fh, $item); fwrite($fh, $arrFile[$currentLine]); $currentLine++; } // Delete backup unlink('backup.rss'); } $data = " <item>\n<title>$_POST['title]</title>\n". " <description>$_POST['description']</description>\n". " <pubDate>$_POST['date']</pubDate>\n". " <link>http://www.site.com/mp3s/". basename($_FILES['fullPath']['name'])."</link>". " <enclosure url=\"http://www.site.com/mp3s/". basename($_FILES['fullPath']['name']). "\" length=\"$_FILES[fullPath][size]\" type=\"audio/mpeg\" />". " </item>\n"; addRSSItem('/var/www/html/rss/podcast.rss',20,$data); ?>

When designing a few flatfile databases and admin panels, I stumbled upon an interesting thing. If a file has been generated into a page or variable via the readfile or include methods (did not try require), an ereg or preg replace to replace \n with does not detect any \n in the file. However, when attempting the same thing with fopen, fread, it works perfectly.

Watch out not to specify empty string as filename. It seems PHP is trying to get data from stdin which may end up in script timeout. It may not be trivial to find. <?php $fp = fopen('', 'r'); // wrong ?>

using fopen to upload a file through ftp cannot overwrite that file - use curl instead

To the people haveing problems with opening "ftp:" url opens and files not being written. It seems that PHP wants the complete path. Make sure your not referencing through a soft link or alias. Use the full path from / ie /usr/www/htdocs/data/blah.php

To overwrite a file with a new content without deleting it, and without changing the owner or access rights, it's best to not use: $file = fopen($filename, 'r+b); // binary update mode ... ftruncate($file, 0); fwrite($file, $my_stuff); ... fclose($file); but instead the faster one: $file = fopen($filename, 'r+b); // binary update mode ... rewind($file); fwrite($file, $my_stuff); fflush($file); ftruncate($file, ftell($file)); ... fclose($file); The reason is that truncating a file at size 0 forces the OS to deallocate all storage clusters used by the file, before you write your content which will be reallocated on disk. The second code simply overwrites the existing content where it is already located on disk, and truncates any remaining bytes that may exist (if the new content is shorter than the old content). The "r+b" mode allows access for both read and write: the file can be kept opened after reading it and before rewriting the modified content. It's particularly useful for files that are accessed often or have a size larger than a few kilobytes, as it saves lots of system I/O, and also limits the filesystem fragmentation if the updated file is quite large. And this method also works if the file is locked exclusively once opened (but I would rather recommend using another empty file for locking purpose, opened with "a+" access mode, in "/var/lock/yourapp/*" or other fast filesystems where filelocks are easily monitored and where the webserver running PHP is allowed to create and update lock files, and not forgetting to close the lock file after closing the content file).

TIP: If you are using fopen and fread to read HTTP or FTP or Remote Files, and experiencing some performance issues such as stalling, slowing down and otherwise, then it's time you learned a thing called cURL. Performance Comparison: 10 per minute for fopen/fread for 100 HTTP files 2000 per minute for cURL for 2000 HTTP files cURL should be used for opening HTTP and FTP files, it is EXTREMELY reliable, even when it comes to performance. I noticed when using too many scripts at the same time to download the data from the site I was harvesting from, fopen and fread would go into deadlock. When using cURL i can open 50 windows, running 10 URL's from each window, and getting the best performance possible. Just a Tip :)

This only relavant to those opening a remote file for writing using the PECL SSH2 for SFTP paths for the string filename. Since SFTP has variations, most of which are non-secure, using this module is the only viable solution. The optional FTP extension class that uses the function 'ftp_ssl_connect' uses openssl, which only encrypts the communication requests and not the data - or something close to that. At any rate, many systems will not allow connection to their SFTP server using this method. I think it's worth mentioning that some of the examples provided in various areas failed consistantly using the syntax given, using both possible methods of. ssh2.sftp://$sftp/example.com/path/to/file ssh2.sftp://user:pass@$sftp/example.com/path/to/file It's just a small adjustment to correct this, but as most coding goes, a long road to find a stupid little oversight. Apparently it is necessary to supply the port as well in the path. Could just be the few systems I was testing against, but that would be three separate networks using three separate platforms (Windows Server, Linux, Unix). At any rate, the following works like a charm, and was very simple to install the libssh2 library and PECL SSH2 module required to use this system. Gotta love PHP. ssh2.sftp://$sftp/example.com:22/path/to/file ssh2.sftp://user:pass@$sftp:22/example.com/path/to/file Hope this saves anyone some headache and time.

This note is relevant to the first few notes that talk about writing to files as user 'foobar'. if one wanted to write to files as user 'foobar' when apache runs as 'root' the new POSIX fucntions. Here's a code snippet explaining how this can be done <? $x = posix_getuid (); if (0 == $x) { echo "I'm root\n"; $pw_info = posix_getpwnam ("foobar"); $uid = $pw_info["uid"]; posix_setuid ($uid); $fp = fopen ("/tmp/test.file", "w"); fclose ($fp); } else { echo "I'm not root! I'm not worthy... I'm not worthy....\n"; } ?> [Note: 1. This would only set the uid... not the gid. If you wanted to write to files as 'foobar:foobar' then you also have to do a posix_setgid ($gid); 2. If you are using the CGI version of php4, you should setuid your php4 interpreter: chmod 4755 /path/to/cgi-bin/php4 (generally, /usr/lib/cgi-bin/php4)]

This is an addendum to ibetyouare at home dot com's note about Apache directory permissions. If you are on a shared host and cannot tweak Apache's permissions directives then you might try setting the same thing in a .htaccess file. Failing that, if you are having trouble just creating files then set the directory permissions to allow writing (for whatever directory the file is supposed to be in) and include the following before fopen(): `touch /path/to/myfile/myfile.txt`; That will usually create a new empty file that you can write to even when fopen fails. - PHP 4.3.0

This function has a basic implementation of HTTP Digest Authentication (as per RFC 2617) to get a file from a web server which requires digest authentication (as opposed to basic authentication - the difference being that, with basic, your password is sent to the server as plain text, whereas with digest, it is hashed with a server-supplied nonce to protect against sniffing and replay attacks). You just supply the host (e.g www.example.com), the name of the file you want (e.g protected_page.html), and the necessary username and password, and the function returns the contents of the protected file (or the error message that the server sends, if you supplied the wrong credentials). If the server only supports a QOP of auth-int (rather then auth) this function won't work, but can be easily modified with reference to the RFC at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2617.txt <?php function readHTTPDigestAuthenticatedFile($host,$file,$username,$password) { if (!$fp=fsockopen($host,80, $errno, $errstr, 15)) return false; //first do the non-authenticated header so that the server //sends back a 401 error containing its nonce and opaque $out = "GET /$file HTTP/1.1\r\n"; $out .= "Host: $host\r\n"; $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n"; fwrite($fp, $out); //read the reply and look for the WWW-Authenticate element while (!feof($fp)) { $line=fgets($fp, 512); if (strpos($line,"WWW-Authenticate:")!==false) $authline=trim(substr($line,18)); } fclose($fp); //split up the WWW-Authenticate string to find digest-realm,nonce and opaque values //if qop value is presented as a comma-seperated list (e.g auth,auth-int) then it won't be retrieved correctly //but that doesn't matter because going to use 'auth' anyway $authlinearr=explode(",",$authline); $autharr=array(); foreach ($authlinearr as $el) { $elarr=explode("=",$el); //the substr here is used to remove the double quotes from the values $autharr[trim($elarr[0])]=substr($elarr[1],1,strlen($elarr[1])-2); } foreach ($autharr as $k=>$v) echo("$k ==> $v\r\n"); //these are all the vals required from the server $nonce=$autharr['nonce']; $opaque=$autharr['opaque']; $drealm=$autharr['Digest realm']; //client nonce can be anything since this authentication session is not going to be persistent //likewise for the cookie - just call it MyCookie $cnonce="sausages"; //calculate the hashes of A1 and A2 as described in RFC 2617 $a1="$username:$drealm:$password";$a2="GET:/$file"; $ha1=md5($a1);$ha2=md5($a2); //calculate the response hash as described in RFC 2617 $concat = $ha1.':'.$nonce.':00000001:'.$cnonce.':auth:'.$ha2; $response=md5($concat); //put together the Authorization Request Header $out = "GET /$file HTTP/1.1\r\n"; $out .= "Host: $host\r\n"; $out .= "Connection: Close\r\n"; $out .= "Cookie: cookie=MyCookie\r\n"; $out .= "Authorization: Digest username=\"$username\", realm=\"$drealm\", qop=\"auth\", algorithm=\"MD5\", uri=\"/$file\", nonce=\"$nonce\", nc=00000001, cnonce=\"$cnonce\", opaque=\"$opaque\", response=\"$response\"\r\n\r\n"; if (!$fp=fsockopen($host,80, $errno, $errstr, 15)) return false; fwrite($fp, $out); //read in a string which is the contents of the required file while (!feof($fp)) { $str.=fgets($fp, 512); } fclose($fp); return $str; } ?>

The UTF-8 BOM is optional. PHP does not ignore it if it is present when reading UTF-8 encoded data. Here is a function that skips the BOM, if it exists. // Reads past the UTF-8 bom if it is there. function fopen_utf8 ($filename, $mode) { $file = @fopen($filename, $mode); $bom = fread($file, 3); if ($bom != b"\xEF\xBB\xBF") rewind($file, 0); else echo "bom found!\n"; return $file; }

The issue involving some sites requiring a valid user-agent string when using fopen can easily be resolved by setting the user_agent string in the PHP.INI file. If you do not have access to the PHP.INI file, then the use of ini_set('user_agent','Mozilla: (compatible; Windows XP)'); should also work. The actual agent string is up to you. If you want to identify to the sites that you are using PHP ... ini_set('user_agent','PHP'); would do. Regards, Richard Quadling.

Thanks very much to flobee (15-Jan-2006) who provided a download() function with realtime writing instead of buffering the result, very clever. However, your function is too basic, it has almost zero error checking, and also forgets to close file handles in one case(!). Not only that, but you have mixed up the meaning of return values, where you have made false = no errors and true = error occured. I've added full error checking, optimized the code, and of course corrected the return values. True = Success. Here are the changes: 1. If the file that we are saving to already exists it removes any read-only flag so that it can be overwritten. 2. Correctly formats the URL we are downloading from so that fopen() understands it. For instance, if you pass a URL with spaces, those have to be encoded to %20, and any html entities such as & have to be decoded to & or the fopen() call fails, I've added these transformations so that the user does not have to pre-format the URL before passing it to download(). 3. I've added the closing of file handles at a point where you forgot to. 4. The error messages are all handled by fopen/fwrite, so if the function has returned false for an error, you need to enable "Display_Errors" in the INI to see what happened, or alternatively use "ini_set('display_errors', 1);" at the top of your PHP file. I don't think there is _anything_ else that can be improved, but if you can think of something then you are welcome to submit your version. function download ($file_source, $file_target) { // Preparations $file_source = str_replace(' ', '%20', html_entity_decode($file_source)); // fix url format if (file_exists($file_target)) { chmod($file_target, 0777); } // add write permission // Begin transfer if (($rh = fopen($file_source, 'rb')) === FALSE) { return false; } // fopen() handles if (($wh = fopen($file_target, 'wb')) === FALSE) { return false; } // error messages. while (!feof($rh)) { // unable to write to file, possibly because the harddrive has filled up if (fwrite($wh, fread($rh, 1024)) === FALSE) { fclose($rh); fclose($wh); return false; } } // Finished without errors fclose($rh); fclose($wh); return true; }

Simple class to fetch a HTTP URL. Supports "Location:"-redirections. Useful for servers with allow_url_fopen=false. Works with SSL-secured hosts. <?php #usage: $r = new HTTPRequest('http://www.php.net'); echo $r->DownloadToString(); class HTTPRequest { var $_fp; // HTTP socket var $_url; // full URL var $_host; // HTTP host var $_protocol; // protocol (HTTP/HTTPS) var $_uri; // request URI var $_port; // port // scan url function _scan_url() { $req = $this->_url; $pos = strpos($req, '://'); $this->_protocol = strtolower(substr($req, 0, $pos)); $req = substr($req, $pos+3); $pos = strpos($req, '/'); if($pos === false) $pos = strlen($req); $host = substr($req, 0, $pos); if(strpos($host, ':') !== false) { list($this->_host, $this->_port) = explode(':', $host); } else { $this->_host = $host; $this->_port = ($this->_protocol == 'https') ? 443 : 80; } $this->_uri = substr($req, $pos); if($this->_uri == '') $this->_uri = '/'; } // constructor function HTTPRequest($url) { $this->_url = $url; $this->_scan_url(); } // download URL to string function DownloadToString() { $crlf = "\r\n"; // generate request $req = 'GET ' . $this->_uri . ' HTTP/1.0' . $crlf . 'Host: ' . $this->_host . $crlf . $crlf; // fetch $this->_fp = fsockopen(($this->_protocol == 'https' ? 'ssl://' : '') . $this->_host, $this->_port); fwrite($this->_fp, $req); while(is_resource($this->_fp) && $this->_fp && !feof($this->_fp)) $response .= fread($this->_fp, 1024); fclose($this->_fp); // split header and body $pos = strpos($response, $crlf . $crlf); if($pos === false) return($response); $header = substr($response, 0, $pos); $body = substr($response, $pos + 2 * strlen($crlf)); // parse headers $headers = array(); $lines = explode($crlf, $header); foreach($lines as $line) if(($pos = strpos($line, ':')) !== false) $headers[strtolower(trim(substr($line, 0, $pos)))] = trim(substr($line, $pos+1)); // redirection? if(isset($headers['location'])) { $http = new HTTPRequest($headers['location']); return($http->DownloadToString($http)); } else { return($body); } } } ?>

Refering to the note by [info at b1g dot de] on (24-Oct-2005 11:54) sometimes you may also want HTTP error code returned from the server. The code of the HTTPRequest class can be modified as followed to do so .. 1. Add another member variable to the class var $_error; // HTTP Error code 2. After the lines . . // parse headers $headers = array(); $lines = explode($crlf, $header); . . add list($proto, $this->_error, $reply) = explode(" ", $lines[0]); $proto and $reply can be treated as junk variables. once DownloadToString() is called, the HTTP error code will be contained in the _error property of the object.

RE: using fopen to read an http doc I beat my head against the wall trying to figure out why i couldn't fopen("http://www.mainserver.com/mySettings.php","r"); on just 1 webserver. It was working on all the other webservers, but on this one, it would just hang, then fail. Finally i figured out the machine i was doing it on was unable to look up domain names! If you are having this problem try an nslookup to the website you are having from the command line. ie: nslookup www.yahoo.com If that fails, the fopen will not work either. I changed to an IP (temp solution) and it works like a charm. -e

Quick tip. If using fopen to make http requests that contain a querystring, it is advised that you urlencode() your values, else characters like @ can make fopen (or whatever wrapper it is using) throw an error.

Playing with fopen("https://xxx", "r") it seems that HTTPS is only supported with OpenSSL AND PHP 4.3 . Older versions of PHP don't seem to be able to do this.

PHP will open a directory if a path with no file name is supplied. This just bit me. I was not checking the filename part of a concatenated string. For example: $fd = fopen('/home/mydir/' . $somefile, 'r'); Will open the directory if $somefile = '' If you attempt to read using the file handle you will get the binary directory contents. I tried append mode and it errors out so does not seem to be dangerous. This is with FreeBSD 4.5 and PHP 4.3.1. Behaves the same on 4.1.1 and PHP 4.1.2. I have not tested other version/os combinations.

php 4.4.2 realy introduced a blocker problem with fopen() (http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=36017) In that case you can use sockets for file open. Example. Not $viart_xml = fopen("http://www.viart.com/viart_shop.xml", "r"); But $viart_xml = fsockopen("www.viart.com", 80, $errno, $errstr, 12); fputs($viart_xml, "GET /viart_shop.xml HTTP/1.0\r\n"); fputs($viart_xml, "Host: www.viart.com\r\n"); fputs($viart_xml, "Referer: http://www.viart.com\r\n"); fputs($viart_xml, "User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)\r\n\r\n"); After that you can use $viart_xml as a simple file :)

pflaume dot NOSPAM at NOSPAM dot gmx dot de's proxy_url() was very helpful to me! Although, I still had a problem: proxy authentication. So I added some code to enable http get through a proxy with user authentication. <?php function proxy_url($proxy_url) { $proxy_name = '127.0.0.1'; $proxy_port = 4001; $proxy_user = "user"; // added $proxy_pass = "password"; // added $proxy_cont = ''; $proxy_fp = fsockopen($proxy_name, $proxy_port); if (!$proxy_fp) {return false;} fputs($proxy_fp, "GET $proxy_url HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: $proxy_name\r\n"); fputs($proxy_fp, "Proxy-Authorization: Basic " . base64_encode ("$proxy_user:$proxy_pass") . "\r\n\r\n"); // added while(!feof($proxy_fp)) {$proxy_cont .= fread($proxy_fp,4096);} fclose($proxy_fp); $proxy_cont = substr($proxy_cont, strpos($proxy_cont,"\r\n\r\n")+4); return $proxy_cont; } ?>

One thing worth noting is that if you use the fopen command to open an HTTP stream, and the URL you're trying to access is invalid or generates an error response, (i.e. 404 Not found), the fopen call will return false.

Note: If you have opened the file in append mode ("a" or "a+"), any data you write to the file will always be appended, regardless of the file position. But PHP distinguish between read and write position, and you may freely read at any position, but when you write it will always append at the end. If you don't want that write restriction, open the file in read-write mode ("r+") and then start by moving the file pointer to the end. if (($fp = fopen($filename, "r+") === FALSE) { // handle error exit; } if (fseek($fp, 0, SEEK_END) === -1) { // handle error exit; }

Note that whether you may open directories is operating system dependent. The following lines: <?php // Windows ($fh === false) $fh = fopen('c:\\Temp', 'r'); // UNIX (is_resource($fh) === true) $fh = fopen('/tmp', 'r'); ?> demonstrate that on Windows (2000, probably XP) you may not open a directory (the error is "Permission Denied"), regardless of the security permissions on that directory. On UNIX, you may happily read the directory format for the native filesystem.

Note that opening a fifo with fopen() will block the php process until data is sent to it. That means any function you have registered as a shutdown function (register_shutdown_function()) will not be called when the user disconnects, and the process will keep running in the background, waiting for input. I know of no way around this, besides using some other means of IPC.

Note that if specifying the optional 'b' (binary) mode, it appears that it cannot be the first letter for some unaccountable reason. In other words, "br" doesn't work, while "rb" is ok!

None of the examples on the page test to see if the file has been opened successfully. Fopen will return false if it failed. To quickly extend one of the examples in the manual: $filename = "some.dat" ; $dataFile = fopen( $filename, "r" ) ; if ( $dataFile ) { while (!feof($dataFile)) { $buffer = fgets($dataFile, 4096); echo $buffer; } fclose($dataFile); } else { die( "fopen failed for $filename" ) ; } Hope this is some use.

My recent findings on high-performance fopen/fsockopen usage. Note #1: The performance comparison below regarding curl is obsolete when utilizing certain things in this comment. My performance tests download and upload about 97% as fast as curl with a custom non-socket blocking HTTP Transport class written for a high performance system in PHP5. Note #2: fopen and fsockopen have a "feature' that always forces DNS resolution. Check this code... <?php for ($i = 0; $i < 50; $i++) { $errno = $errstr = ""; //$ip = gethostbyname("php.net"); $a = fsockopen($ip,22,$errno,$errstr,10); //FAST way $a = fsockopen("php.net",22,$errno,$errstr,10); //SLOW way $ab = fread($a,4096); unset($a, $ab); } ?> fsockopen() and fopen() always force php.net to be resolved every time and in this example above it resolves the name 50 seperate times and does not use the local cache. To get around this, gethostbyname() does use your local DNS cache properly, it will not try to get the IP from your DNS server 50 times. The above code for me to a personal server took 87 seconds the fast way, and 5.74 seconds the slow way, a 650% increase. And this is single-threaded! ;) Note #3: I see a lot of notes and people mentioning non-blocking sockets, especially for HTTP transport. I thought I would share a little from my experience. First, the above command fsockopen() allows you to specify a timeout, after you check if it's opened properly (as you should _always_) you just need to... <?php stream_set_blocking($a,0);?> From this point on certain considerations must be taken. Remember you are not blocking anymore, so when you want to write or read a lot of data it will always return to you instantly. Which is important since you need to check the return value of your writes and reads against how much you expect to read/write. For reading if you do not know how long it is, checking for EOF works also. This is in fact a neat feature and state, since you can now make a read/write loop to send/receive a lot of data and check the time/timeout value(s) constantly. If that timeout is hit you can throw back errors properly to whatever function/method/code called your transport function/class. The graceful failure with custom shorter failure times allows your application to continue, especially web-based applications where fopen alone and even curl under certain circumstances does not follow your requested timeouts, it will wait a full 60-90 seconds, depending on your OS. Good ways to test a custom non-blocking timeout supported transport method described above is to make one first, and then transfer a large file with it, and halfway through unplug your network cable. Curl or fopen/fread/fwrite alone will croak and make your applications wait a full 60-90 seconds, whereas a nice custom class will check if no data has been transferred for 15 seconds (or less!) and will fail gracefully with a error. If anyone is interested in chatting about this feel free to contact me or add to this comment.

It seems that fopen() errors when you attempt opening a url starting with HTTP:// as opposed to http:// - it is case sensitive. In 4.3.1 anyway..."HTTP://", by not matching "http://" will tell the wrapper to look locally. From the looks of the source, the same goes for HTTPS vs https, etc.

It seems php 4.4.2 introduced a blocker problem with fopen() (http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=36017).

In reply to "pflaume dot NOSPAM at NOSPAM dot gmx dot de" about fopen() and PROXY With PHP 5.0.0 and after, you can use a proxy by using a stream context. See the note about "Context support was added with PHP 5.0.0".

In IIS you must add the group Authenticated Users with write and modify permissions in the file where you want to write if you are in a Protected directory (Basic or Digest authentication) and want to write to a file in a Unprotected directory (Anonymous Access) in order to get permission to do that. Otherwise you will get the message: PHP Warning: fopen(x.txt): failed to open stream: Permission denied in c:\web\x\x.php on line 3 PHP Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in c:\web\x\x.php on line 10

Important note: You have always to use the real path name for a file with the command fopen [for example: fopen($filename, 'w')], never use a symbolic link, it will not work (unable to open $filename).

If you're using fopen to open a URL that requires authorization, you might need to force a HTTP/1.0 request for it since fopen won't support HTTP/1.1 requests. You can do that by setting your user_agent to one that is known only to support HTTP/1.0 (most webservers will be configured to force HTTP/1.0 for some browsers). Here's what worked for me: <?php $returned=URLopen("http://$username:$password@example.com"); function URLopen($url) { // Fake the browser type ini_set('user_agent','MSIE 4\.0b2;'); $dh = fopen("$url",'r'); $result = fread($dh,8192); return $result; } ?>

If you're running PHP as apache module, it will always write files as "nobody", "www", "httpd", (or whatever user your webserver runs as) unless you specify a different user/group in httpd.conf, or compile apache with suexec support. However, if you run PHP as a CGI wrapper, you may setuid the PHP executable to whatever user you wish (*severe* security issues apply). If you really want to be able to su to other user, I recommend compiling with suexec support. AFAIK, PHP can't NOT use SuEXEC if apache does. If PHP is configured as an apache module it will act as whatever user the apache is. If apache SuEXEC's to otheruser:othergroup (e.g. root:root), that's what PHP will write files as, because it acts as a part of apache code. I suggest you double-check your SuEXEC configuration and settings. Note: you can't su to another user within the PHP code -- it has to be an apache directive, either through <VirtualHost>, or through .htaccess. Also note: I'm not sure how it all works (if it works at all) on Win32 platforms. Check www.apache.org to see how it's done.

If you're having problems with fopen("url...") but you can run 'host url' in a shell window and get the correct lookup, here's why... This has had me banging my head against it all day - finally I found the answer buried in the bug reports, but figured it should really be more prominent! The problem happens when you're on an ADSL line with DHCP (like our office)... When the ADSL modem renews the DHCP lease, you can also switch DNS servers, which confuses apache (and hence PHP) - meaning that you can't look up hosts from within PHP, even though you *can* from the commandline.... The short-term solution is to restart apache. You'll get "php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in ..." messages as symptoms. Restart apache, and they're gone :-) Simon

If you want to open large files (more than 2GB) that's what I did and it works: you should recompile your php with the CFLAGS="-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64" ./configure etc... This tells to your compiler (I tested only gcc on PHP-4.3.4 binary on Linux and Solaris) to make the PHP parser binary large file aware. This way fopen() will not give you the "Value too large for defined data type" error message. God bless PHP ciao Sergio Paternoster

If you want to download a file from a URL to a local file, you could just as well use copy() :)

If you need fopen() on a URL to timeout, you can do like: <?php $timeout = 3; $old = ini_set('default_socket_timeout', $timeout); $file = fopen('http://example.com', 'r'); ini_set('default_socket_timeout', $old); stream_set_timeout($file, $timeout); stream_set_blocking($file, 0); //the rest is standard ?>

If you have problems with safe mode creating errors "Warning: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is.." because one of your PHP scripts created the PHP file you are now trying to run, then you can use fopen() to create these files which will then be owned by you (not the server admin). It must be done using the ftp method... >> fopen('ftp://user:pass@domain.com', 'w+b'); But please remember that this only creates files, I haven’t found a way around setting the correct UID on folders (yet) Krang - http://www.krang.org.uk

If you are getting message "Warning: fopen(): URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration", you can use function below to get the content from a local or remote file. Function uses CURL lib, follow the link to get help: http://www.php.net/curl <?php /* * @return string * @param string $url * @desc Return string content from a remote file * @author Luiz Miguel Axcar (lmaxcar@yahoo.com.br) */ function get_content($url) { $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); ob_start(); curl_exec ($ch); curl_close ($ch); $string = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); return $string; } #usage: $content = get_content ("http://www.php.net"); var_dump ($content); ?>

If you are connecting to your ftp server through a router doing NAT (such as the Zyxel 128L prestige router/bridge we are using) by doing say an <? fopen("ftp://ftpusername:ftppassword@ftpserver/".$file_name, "w") ?>, then this could fail. You will get php_hostconnect connection failed error. This is because <?fopen() ?>function uses a passive ftp connection which the Zyxel router does not support, even though your ftp server may be configured to allow the passive connections which php <?fopen?> function is using. Note that $file_name is the file we want to ftp to the remote server eg could be file.txt. Thus an alternative would be to do create the file you want in a local directory of your machine or in the webserver where your php files reside eg use <?fwrite()?> as documented in the manual. Once you have the $file_name you want to ftp created, do the following: <? ftp_connect($ftp_server); //which can connect to the ftp server using an active connection. ftp_login ($conn_id, $ftp_username."@".$ftp_server, $ftp_password); $fp = fopen($PATH."".$file_name, 'r'); // eg. $fp = fopen("http://www.yourwebsite.com/".$file_name, 'r'); //turn off passive mode transfers ftp_pasv ($conn_id, false); //now upload $file_name ftp_fput($conn_id, $file_name, $fp, FTP_ASCII)); ?> Your file should now be in your ftp server, having used an active connection.

If there is a file thatÂ´s excessively being rewritten by many different users, youÂ´ll note that two almost-simultaneously accesses on that file could interfere with each other. For example if thereÂ´s a chat history containing only the last 25 chat lines. Now adding a line also means deleting the very first one. So while that whole writing is happening, another user might also add a line, reading the file, which, at this point, is incomplete, because itÂ´s just being rewritten. The second user would then rewrite an incomplete file and add its line to it, meaning: you just got yourself some data loss! If flock() was working at all, that might be the key to not let those interferences happen - but flock() mostly wonÂ´t work as expected (at least thatÂ´s my experience on any linux webserver IÂ´ve tried), and writing own file-locking-functions comes with a lot of possible issues that would finally result in corrupted files. Even though itÂ´s very unlikely, itÂ´s not impossible and has happened to me already. So I came up with another solution for the file-interference-problem: 1. A file thatÂ´s to be accessed will first be copied to a temp-file directory and its last filemtime() is being stored in a PHP-variable. The temp-file gets a random filename, ensuring no other process is able to interfere with this particular temp-file. 2. When the temp-file has been changed/rewritten/whatever, thereÂ´ll be a check whether the filemtime() of the original file has been changed since we copied it into our temp-directory. 2.1. If filemtime() is still the same, the temp-file will just be renamed/moved to the original filename, ensuring the original file is never in a temporary state - only the complete previous state or the complete new state. 2.2. But if filemtime() has been changed while our PHP-process wanted to change its file, the temp-file will just be deleted and our new PHP-fileclose-function will return a FALSE, enabling whatever called that function to do it again (ie. upto 5 times, until it returns TRUE). These are the functions IÂ´ve written for that purpose: <?php $dir_fileopen = "../AN/INTERNAL/DIRECTORY/fileopen"; function randomid() { return time().substr(md5(microtime()), 0, rand(5, 12)); } function cfopen($filename, $mode, $overwriteanyway = false) { global $dir_fileopen; clearstatcache(); do { $id = md5(randomid(rand(), TRUE)); $tempfilename = $dir_fileopen."/".$id.md5($filename); } while(file_exists($tempfilename)); if (file_exists($filename)) { $newfile = false; copy($filename, $tempfilename); }else{ $newfile = true; } $fp = fopen($tempfilename, $mode); return $fp ? array($fp, $filename, $id, @filemtime($filename), $newfile, $overwriteanyway) : false; } function cfwrite($fp,$string) { return fwrite($fp[0], $string); } function cfclose($fp, $debug = "off") { global $dir_fileopen; $success = fclose($fp[0]); clearstatcache(); $tempfilename = $dir_fileopen."/".$fp[2].md5($fp[1]); if ((@filemtime($fp[1]) == $fp[3]) or ($fp[4]==true and !file_exists($fp[1])) or $fp[5]==true) { rename($tempfilename, $fp[1]); }else{ unlink($tempfilename); if ($debug != "off") echo "While writing, another process accessed $fp[1]. To ensure file-integrity, your changes were rejected."; $success = false; } return $success; } ?> $overwriteanyway, one of the parameters for cfopen(), means: If cfclose() is used and the original file has changed, this script wonÂ´t care and still overwrite the original file with the new temp file. Anyway there wonÂ´t be any writing-interference between two PHP processes, assuming there can be no absolute simultaneousness between two (or more) processes.

I was working on a consol script for win32 and noticed a few things about it. On win32 it appears that you can't re-open the input stream for reading, but rather you have to open it once, and read from there on. Also, i don't know if this is a bug or what but it appears that fgets() reads until the new line anyway. The number of characters returned is ok, but it will not halt reading and return to the script. I don't know of a work around for this right now, but i'll keep working on it. This is some code to work around the close and re-open of stdin. <?php function read($length='255'){ if (!isset($GLOBALS['StdinPointer'])){ $GLOBALS['StdinPointer']=fopen("php://stdin","r"); } $line=fgets($GLOBALS['StdinPointer'],$length); return trim($line); } echo "Enter your name: "; $name=read(); echo "Enter your age: "; $age=read(); echo "Hi $name, Isn't it Great to be $age years old?"; @fclose($StdinPointer); ?>

I offer the following script for updating a counter, using methods gleaned from various posts on file operations... <? $counter_file = 'somefile.txt'; clearstatcache(); ignore_user_abort(true); ## prevent refresh from aborting file operations and hosing file $fh = fopen($counter_file, 'r+b'); ## use 'r+b' so file can be read and written if ($fh) { if (flock($fh, LOCK_EX)) ## don't do anything unless lock is successful { $count = fread($fh, filesize($counter_file)); rewind($fh); $count++; fwrite($fh, $count); fflush($fh); ftruncate($fh, ftell($fh)); ## better than truncating to 0 before writing, per 04-Mar-2003 comment below flock($fh, LOCK_UN); } else echo "Could not lock counter file '$counter_file'"; fclose($fh); } else echo "Could not open counter file '$counter_file'"; ignore_user_abort(false); ## put things back to normal echo "counter is at $count"; ?>

I just used explode() as an alternative to fscanf, since my only delimiter was | (pipe). I was having problems with it, since I use it in my news-management script. I found that it cut the last variable I was using, $body, a bit short when I posted a long news post. This would've been a real problem for anybody trying to make news posts longer than a paragraph or so. However, I found that when I used: list($variable1, $variable2, etc) = explode("|",$data); it didn't cut any variables short, so.. what I'm really trying to say here is that for people who are experiencing problems with parsing simple files (i.e with only a single, simple delimiter such as : or |) using the unecessarily complex fscanf() and sscanf() functions, explode() is definately the way to go. function get_news($filepath, $newsid) { $datafile = fopen("$filepath/news/$newsid.txt","r"); $data = fread($datafile, 1000000); list($author, $email, $date, $subject, $body) = explode("|",$data); $body = stripslashes("$body"); $subject = stripslashes("$subject"); echo "<a href=\"mailto:$email\">$author</a> -- $date -- $subject<hr>$body "; } sample file: AdministratorMax|admin@somesite.com|Tuesday, March 5th @ 5:45 PM EST|Site Going Down Tomarrow|Well, folks, I\'m sorry to say that the site will indeed be down tomarrow for most of the day. Hang in there. Output: <a href="mailto:admin@somesite.com">AdministratorMax</a> -- Tuesday, March 5th -- Site Going Down Tomarrow<hr>Well, folks, I'm sorry to say that the site will indeed be down tomarrow for most of the day. Hang in there. Thought that might be useful for anybody making a simple news-management script, ;) By the way, feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes - I'm at my dad's work where I don't really have a way to check to see if it works or not. However, I use a more complex version of this on my portal project, and it works beautifully.

I have found that I can do fopen("COM1:", "r+"); to open the comport in windows. You have to make sure the comport isn't already open or you will get a permission denied. I am still playing around with this but you have to somehow flush what you send to the comport if you are trying to communicate realtime with a device.

I found a strange behaviour of PHP when several scripts trying to fopen a file for writing access simultaneously. I expect that this will result file sharing violation, but it's not and all scripts can open and write that file. I'd like to use sharing violation to control uniqueness of script instance, but now I even do know how to do this. The only idea is to use "x" flag in fopen(), but if that lock-file somehow will not be deleted - script will never run. PHP 5.0.5, Windows XP Pro SP2

I found a nice trick how to work around the issue (mentioned here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fopen.php#41243) that the PHP process will block on opening a FIFO until data is sent to it: Simply do send some data to the FIFO, using an echo command started in background (and ignoring that spedific data, when parsing whatever read from the FIFO). A very simple example of that: <? // path & name of your FIFO-file $someFIFO = "path/to/your/fifo" // some string, that won't be found in your regular input data $uniqueData = "some specific data"; // this statement actually does the trick providing some data waiting in the FIFO: // start echo to send data to the FIFO in the background!! // NOTE: parenthesis & second redirection (to /dev/null) are // important to keep PHP from waiting for echo to terminate! system("(echo -n '$uniqueData' >$someFIFO) >/dev/null &"); // now you can safely open the FIFO, without the PHP-process being blocked $handle = fopen($someFIFO, 'r'); // loop reading data from the FIFO while (TRUE) { $data = fread($handle, 8192); // eliminate the initially sent data from our read input // NOTE: this is done only in a very simplyfied way in this example, // that will break if that data-string might also be part of your regular input!! if (!(strpos($inp, $uniqueData) === FALSE)) $data = str_replace($uniqueData, '', $data); // here comes your processing of the read data... } ?>

I did some basic performance testing of fopen() + fread() versus file_get_contents() when opening a remote file for reading, and it looks like fread() is actually a little bit faster than fopen(). While it may be because of my GoDaddy hosting serverâ€™s configuration, it makes me favor using fopen() over file_get_contents(). Fopen() also has the added benefit of greater PHP version compatibility. Test results: http://www.ebrueggeman.com/php_benchmarking_fopen.php

I couldn't for the life of me get a certain php script working when i moved my server to a new Fedora 4 installation. The problem was that fopen() was failing when trying to access a file as a URL through apache -- even though it worked fine when run from the shell and even though the file was readily readable from any browser. After trying to place blame on Apache, RedHat, and even my cat and dog, I finally ran across this bug report on Redhat's website: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=164700 Basically the problem was SELinux (which I knew nothing about) -- you have to run the following command in order for SELinux to allow php to open a web file: /usr/sbin/setsebool httpd_can_network_connect=1 To make the change permanent, run it with the -P option: /usr/sbin/setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect=1 Hope this helps others out -- it sure took me a long time to track down the problem.

For those of you who do not have cURL, you might want to try this. It doesn't have all the functions that cURL has, but it has the basics. Please let me know of any bugs or problems. <?php function open_page($url,$f=1,$c=2,$r=0,$a=0,$cf=0,$pd=""){ global $oldheader; $url = str_replace("http://","",$url); if (preg_match("#/#","$url")){ $page = $url; $url = @explode("/",$url); $url = $url[0]; $page = str_replace($url,"",$page); if (!$page || $page == ""){ $page = "/"; } $ip = gethostbyname($url); }else{ $ip = gethostbyname($url); $page = "/"; } $open = fsockopen($ip, 80, $errno, $errstr, 60); if ($pd){ $send = "POST $page HTTP/1.0\r\n"; }else{ $send = "GET $page HTTP/1.0\r\n"; } $send .= "Host: $url\r\n"; if ($r){ $send .= "Referer: $r\r\n"; }else{ if ($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']){ $send .= "Referer: {$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']}\r\n"; } } if ($cf){ if (@file_exists($cf)){ $cookie = urldecode(@file_get_contents($cf)); if ($cookie){ $send .= "Cookie: $cookie\r\n"; $add = @fopen($cf,'w'); fwrite($add,""); fclose($add); } } } $send .= "Accept-Language: en-us, en;q=0.50\r\n"; if ($a){ $send .= "User-Agent: $a\r\n"; }else{ $send .= "User-Agent: {$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']}\r\n"; } if ($pd){ $send .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n"; $send .= "Content-Length: " .strlen($pd) ."\r\n\r\n"; $send .= $pd; }else{ $send .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n"; } fputs($open, $send); while (!feof($open)) { $return .= fgets($open, 4096); } fclose($open); $return = @explode("\r\n\r\n",$return,2); $header = $return[0]; if ($cf){ if (preg_match("/Set\-Cookie\: /i","$header")){ $cookie = @explode("Set-Cookie: ",$header,2); $cookie = $cookie[1]; $cookie = explode("\r",$cookie); $cookie = $cookie[0]; $cookie = str_replace("path=/","",$cookie[0]); $add = @fopen($cf,'a'); fwrite($add,$cookie,strlen($read)); fclose($add); } } if ($oldheader){ $header = "$oldheader<br /><br />\n$header"; } $header = str_replace("\n","<br />",$header); if ($return[1]){ $body = $return[1]; }else{ $body = ""; } if ($c === 2){ if ($body){ $return = $body; }else{ $return = $header; } } if ($c === 1){ $return = $header; } if ($c === 3){ $return = "$header$body"; } if ($f){ if (preg_match("/Location\:/","$header")){ $url = @explode("Location: ",$header); $url = $url[1]; $url = @explode("\r",$url); $url = $url[0]; $oldheader = str_replace("\r\n\r\n","",$header); $l = "&#76&#111&#99&#97&#116&#105&#111&#110&#58"; $oldheader = str_replace("Location:",$l,$oldheader); return open_page($url,$f,$c,$r,$a,$cf,$pd); }else{ return $return; } }else{ return $return; } } ///////////// ////Usage//// ///////////// $url = "http://www.php.net"; $f = 1; $c = 2;//1 for header, 2 for body, 3 for both $r = NULL; $a = NULL; $cf = NULL; $pd = NULL; $page = open_page($url,$f,$c,$r,$a,$cf,$pd); print $page; ?>

fopen() and PROXY I wondered why there is no possibility to use fopen() through a proxy in php. The solution posted above did not work for me. This little function gets http through a given proxy: <?php function proxy_url($proxy_url) { $proxy_name = '127.0.0.1'; $proxy_port = 4001; $proxy_cont = ''; $proxy_fp = fsockopen($proxy_name, $proxy_port); if (!$proxy_fp) {return false;} fputs($proxy_fp, "GET $proxy_url HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: $proxy_name\r\n\r\n"); while(!feof($proxy_fp)) {$proxy_cont .= fread($proxy_fp,4096);} fclose($proxy_fp); $proxy_cont = substr($proxy_cont, strpos($proxy_cont,"\r\n\r\n")+4); return $proxy_cont; } ?>

During development of a set of non-blocking functions for downloading files from http-servers I've discovered that it's not possible to set timeout for fopen('http://somesite.com/somefile', 'rb'). All functions for controlling non-blocking mode (stream_set_blocking, stream_set_timeout, stream_context_set_option) use resource handle that is created via fopen(). But fopen() for HTTP connections internally makes quite a big set of actions: it creates socket, resolves webserver name, establishes actual connection. So hanging can occur anywhere in resolving and creating tcp-connection but you cannot control it. Solutions: 1) Use socket functions. Set socket in non-blocking mode just after creation. Implement HTTP-protocol yourself. In source code use these manually created functions. 2) Write a wrapper for myprotocol://, which internally will use first solution, but in source code you'll use fopen('myprotocol://somesite.com/somefile', 'rb') with some way to set timeout before calling it.

download: i need a function to simulate a "wget url" and do not buffer the data in the memory to avoid thouse problems on large files: <?php function download($file_source, $file_target) { $rh = fopen($file_source, 'rb'); $wh = fopen($file_target, 'wb'); if ($rh===false || $wh===false) { // error reading or opening file return true; } while (!feof($rh)) { if (fwrite($wh, fread($rh, 1024)) === FALSE) { // 'Download error: Cannot write to file ('.$file_target.')'; return true; } } fclose($rh); fclose($wh); // No error return false; } ?>

Contrary to what this page says, the preferred line ending on Macintosh systems is \n (LF). \r was used on legacy versions of the Mac OS (pre-OS X), and I don't think PHP even runs on those.

Contrary to a note below the concept of what the preferred line ending is on mac os x is a little bit fuzzy. I'm pretty sure all the bsd utils installed by default are going to use \n but that is not necessarily the norm. Some apps will use that while others will use \r. You should be prepared to deal with either.

Also if you're server is useing htaccess to authticate users make sure to add the username and password to the http link you're trying to open. I forgot about this and took a while to find. ie: fopen("http://user:pass@www.mysite.com/mypage.php");

A note on pflaume dot NOSPAM at NOSPAM dot gmx dot de's proxy application for fopen, which was very handy. I found with Tor on OSX that the Host request header to the proxy (set to the Proxy IP) was not necessary, and was passed on to the target site causing most to return a 404 Error.

@ericw at w3consultant dot net: It's a resource, not an object. var_dump meant what it said. ;) http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.resource.php http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.is-resource.php

<?php // HOW TO USE PHP TO WRITE TO YOUR SERIAL PORT: TWO METHODS $serproxy=true; if ($serproxy) { // Use this code in conjunction with SERPROXY.EXE // (http://www.lspace.nildram.co.uk/freeware.html) // which converts a Serial stream to a TCP/IP stream $fp = fsockopen ("localhost", 5331, $errno, $errstr, 30); if (!$fp) { echo "$errstr ($errno)"; } else { $e = chr(27); $string = $e . "A" . $e . "H300"; $string .= $e . "V100" . $e . "XL1SATO"; $string .= $e . "Q1" . $e . "Z"; echo $string; fputs ($fp, $string ); fclose ($fp); } } elseif ($com1) { // Use this code to write directly to the COM1 serial port // First, you want to set the mode of the port. You need to set // it only once; it will remain the same until you reboot. // Note: the backticks on the following line will execute the // DOS 'mode' command from within PHP `mode com1: BAUD=9600 PARITY=N data=8 stop=1 xon=off`; $fp = fopen ("COM1:", "w+"); if (!$fp) { echo "Uh-oh. Port not opened."; } else { $e = chr(27); $string = $e . "A" . $e . "H300"; $string .= $e . "V100" . $e . "XL1SATO"; $string .= $e . "Q1" . $e . "Z"; echo $string; fputs ($fp, $string ); fclose ($fp); } } ?>

fopen

Opens file or URL (PHP 4, PHP 5)
resource fopen ( string filename, string mode [, bool use_include_path [, resource context]] )

Example 640. fopen() examples

Related Examples ( Source code ) » fopen

Code Examples / Notes » fopen

Change Language