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Unit 11: Directories and Files

<? Notes
$body_content=”This is my content”; // Store some text to enter inside the file
$file_name=”test_file.txt”; // file name
$fp = fopen ($file_name, “w”); // Open the file in write mode, if file does not
fwrite ($fp,$body_content); // entering data to the file
fclose ($fp); // closing the file pointer
chmod($file_name,0777); // changing the file permission.

?>
11.6.3 File Write: Overwriting

Now that testFile.txt contains some data we can demonstrate what happens when you open an
existing file for writing. All the data contained in the file is wiped clean and you start with an
empty file. In this example we open our existing filetestFile.txt and write some new data into it.
PHP Code

$myFile = “testFile.txt”;

$fh = fopen($myFile, ‘w’) or die(“can’t open file”);
$stringData = “Floppy Jalopy\n”;

fwrite($fh, $stringData);
$stringData = “Pointy Pinto\n”;

fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);

If you now open the testFile.txt file you will see that Bobby and Tracy have both vanished, as
we expected, and only the data we just wrote is present.

Contents of the TestFile.txt File

Floppy Jalopy

Pointy Pinto

11.7 Appending Files

So far we have learned how to open, close, read, and write to a file. However, the ways in which
we have written to a file so far have caused the data that was stored in the file to be deleted.
If you want to append to a file, that is, add on to the existing data, then you need to open the
file in append mode.

Again, we attempt to open the file. This time we’re passing mode ‘a’. This is what we use to
append the text to the end of the file. If you wish to add data to the end of the file and keep
from overwriting the previous data, this is the mode you want to use.

So again we set a $line variable and write it to the file. This time, the line is added to the end
of the file. You can open the file and take a look, and you’ll see that the text is written on the
next line.

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