file_put_contents() strips the last line ending
If you really want an extra line ending at the end of a file when writing with file_put_contents(), you must append an extra PHP_EOL to the end of the line as follows.
<?php
$a_str = array("these","are","new","lines");
$contents = implode(PHP_EOL, $a_str);
$contents .= PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL;
file_put_contents("newfile.txt", $contents);
print("|$contents|");
?>
You can see that when you print $contents you get two extra line endings, but if you view the file newfile.txt, you only get one.
file_put_contents
(PHP 5)
file_put_contents — Write a string to a file
Description
This function is identical to calling fopen(), fwrite() and fclose() successively to write data to a file.
If filename does not exist, the file is created. Otherwise, the existing file is overwritten, unless the FILE_APPEND flags is set.
Parameters
- filename
-
Path to the file where to write the data.
- data
-
The data to write. Can be either a string, an array or a stream resource.
If data is a stream resource, the remaining buffer of that stream will be copied to the specified file. This is similar with using stream_copy_to_stream().
You can also specify the data parameter as a single dimension array. This is equivalent to file_put_contents($filename, implode('', $array)).
- flags
-
The value of flags can be any combination of the following flags (with some restrictions), joined with the binary OR (|) operator.
Available flags Flag Description FILE_USE_INCLUDE_PATH Search for filename in the include directory. See include_path for more information. FILE_APPEND If file filename already exists, append the data to the file instead of overwriting it. Mutually exclusive with LOCK_EX since appends are atomic and thus there is no reason to lock. LOCK_EX Acquire an exclusive lock on the file while proceeding to the writing. Mutually exclusive with FILE_APPEND. FILE_TEXT data is written in text mode. If unicode semantics are enabled, the default encoding is UTF-8. You can specify a different encoding by creating a custom context or by using the stream_default_encoding() to change the default. This flag cannot be used with FILE_BINARY. This flag is only available since PHP 6. FILE_BINARY data will be written in binary mode. This is the default setting and cannot be used with FILE_TEXT. This flag is only available since PHP 6. - context
-
A valid context resource created with stream_context_create().
Return Values
The function returns the number of bytes that were written to the file, or FALSE on failure.
Examples
Example #1 Simple usage example
<?php
$file = 'people.txt';
// Open the file to get existing content
$current = file_get_contents($file);
// Append a new person to the file
$current .= "John Smith\n";
// Write the contents back to the file
file_put_contents($file, $current);
?>
Example #2 Using flags
<?php
$file = 'people.txt';
// The new person to add to the file
$person = "John Smith\n";
// Write the contents to the file,
// using the FILE_APPEND flag to append the content to the end of the file
// and the LOCK_EX flag to prevent anyone else writing to the file at the same time
file_put_contents($file, $person, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX);
?>
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 5.0.0 | Added context support |
| 5.1.0 | Added support for LOCK_EX and the ability to pass a stream resource to the data parameter |
| 6.0.0 | Added support for the FILE_TEXT and FILE_BINARY flags |
Notes
Note: This function is binary-safe.
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.
See Also
- fopen() - Opens file or URL
- fwrite() - Binary-safe file write
- file_get_contents() - Reads entire file into a string
- stream_context_create() - Create a streams context
file_put_contents
25-Jun-2009 05:57
07-Nov-2008 12:31
I wrote this script implementing the file_put_contents() and file_get_contents() functions to be compatible with both php4.* and php 5.*. It is a PHP Command line interface script which searches and replaces a specific word recursively through all files in the supplied directory hierarchy.
Usage from a Linux command line: ./scriptname specifieddirectory searchString replaceString
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
$argc = $_SERVER['argc'];
$argv = $_SERVER['argv'];
if($argc != 4)
{
echo "This command replaces a search string with a replacement string\n for the contents of all files in a directory hierachy\n";
echo "command usage: $argv[0] directory searchString replaceString\n";
echo "\n";
exit;
}
?><?php
if (!function_exists('file_put_contents')) {
function file_put_contents($filename, $data) {
$f = @fopen($filename, 'w');
if (!$f) {
return false;
} else {
$bytes = fwrite($f, $data);
fclose($f);
return $bytes;
}
}
}
function get_file_contents($filename)
/* Returns the contents of file name passed
*/
{
if (!function_exists('file_get_contents'))
{
$fhandle = fopen($filename, "r");
$fcontents = fread($fhandle, filesize($filename));
fclose($fhandle);
}
else
{
$fcontents = file_get_contents($filename);
}
return $fcontents;
}
?><?php
function openFileSearchAndReplace($parentDirectory, $searchFor, $replaceWith)
{
//echo "debug here- line 1a\n";
//echo "$parentDirectory\n";
//echo "$searchFor\n";
//echo "$replaceWith\n";
if ($handle = opendir("$parentDirectory")) {
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
if (($file != "." && $file != "..") && !is_dir($file)) {
chdir("$parentDirectory"); //to make sure you are always in right directory
// echo "$file\n";
$holdcontents = file_get_contents($file);
$holdcontents2 = str_replace($searchFor, $replaceWith, $holdcontents);
file_put_contents($file, $holdcontents2);
// echo "debug here- line 1\n";
// echo "$file\n";
}
if(is_dir($file) && ($file != "." && $file != ".."))
{
$holdpwd = getcwd();
//echo "holdpwd = $holdpwd \n";
$newdir = "$holdpwd"."/$file";
//echo "newdir = $newdir \n"; //for recursive call
openFileSearchAndReplace($newdir, $searchFor, $replaceWith);
//echo "debug here- line 2\n";
//echo "$file\n";
}
}
closedir($handle);
}
}
$parentDirectory2 = $argv[1];
$searchFor2 = $argv[2];
$replaceWith2 = $argv[3];
//Please do not edit below to keep the rights to this script
//Free license, if contents below this line is not edited
echo "REPLACED\n'$searchFor2' with '$replaceWith2' recursively through directory listed below\nFor all files that current user has write permissions for\nDIRECTORY: '$parentDirectory2'\n";
echo "command written by Kolapo Akande :) all rights reserved :)\n";
$holdpwd = getcwd();
//echo "$holdpwd\n";
chdir($parentDirectory2);
openFileSearchAndReplace($parentDirectory2, $searchFor2, $replaceWith2);
exit;
?>
04-Aug-2008 10:11
This is example, how to save Error Array into simple log file
<?php
$error[] = 'some error';
$error[] = 'some error 2';
@file_put_contents('log.txt',date('c')."\n".implode("\n", $error),FILE_APPEND);
?>
02-Jul-2008 02:25
File put contents fails if you try to put a file in a directory that doesn't exist. This creates the directory.
<?php
function file_force_contents($dir, $contents){
$parts = explode('/', $dir);
$file = array_pop($parts);
$dir = '';
foreach($parts as $part)
if(!is_dir($dir .= "/$part")) mkdir($dir);
file_put_contents("$dir/$file", $contents);
}
?>
02-May-2008 08:06
file_put_contents() will cause concurrency problems - that is, it doesn't write files atomically (in a single operation), which sometimes means that one php script will be able to, for example, read a file before another script is done writing that file completely.
The following function was derived from a function in Smarty (http://smarty.php.net) which uses rename() to replace the file - rename() is atomic on Linux.
On Windows, rename() is not currently atomic, but should be in the next release. Until then, this function, if used on Windows, will fall back on unlink() and rename(), which is still not atomic...
<?php
define("FILE_PUT_CONTENTS_ATOMIC_TEMP", dirname(__FILE__)."/cache");
define("FILE_PUT_CONTENTS_ATOMIC_MODE", 0777);
function file_put_contents_atomic($filename, $content) {
$temp = tempnam(FILE_PUT_CONTENTS_ATOMIC_TEMP, 'temp');
if (!($f = @fopen($temp, 'wb'))) {
$temp = FILE_PUT_CONTENTS_ATOMIC_TEMP . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . uniqid('temp');
if (!($f = @fopen($temp, 'wb'))) {
trigger_error("file_put_contents_atomic() : error writing temporary file '$temp'", E_USER_WARNING);
return false;
}
}
fwrite($f, $content);
fclose($f);
if (!@rename($temp, $filename)) {
@unlink($filename);
@rename($temp, $filename);
}
@chmod($filename, FILE_PUT_CONTENTS_ATOMIC_MODE);
return true;
}
?>
03-Jan-2008 12:23
I use the following code to create a rudimentary text editor. It's not fancy, but then it doesn't have to be. You could easily add a parameter to specify a file to edit; I have not done so to avoid the potential security headaches.
There are still obvious security holes here, but for most applications it should be reasonably safe if implemented for brief periods in a counterintuitive spot. (Nobody says you have to make a PHP file for that purpose; you can tack it on anywhere, so long as it is at the beginning of a file.)
<?php
$random1 = 'randomly_generated_string';
$random2 = 'another_randomly_generated_string';
$target_file = 'file_to_edit.php';
$this_file = 'the_current_file.php';
if ($_REQUEST[$random1] === $random2) {
if (isset($_POST['content']))
file_put_contents($target_file, get_magic_quotes_qpc() ? stripslashes($_POST['content']) : $_POST['content']);
die('<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>Editing...</title>
</head>
<body>
<form method="post" action="' . $this_file . '" />
<input type="hidden" name="' . $random1 . '" value="' . $random2 . '" />
<textarea name="content" rows="50" cols="100">' . file_get_contents($target_file) . '</textarea><br />
<input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
</form>
</body>
</html>');
}
?>
Then simply browse to hxxp://www.example.com/{$this_file}?{$random1}={$random2}, with the appropriate values substituted for each bracketed variable. Please note that this code assumes the target file to be world writable (-rw-rw-rw- or 666) and will fail to save properly without error if it is not.
Once again, this is by no means secure or permanent, but as a quick fix for brief edits to noncritical files it should be sufficient, and its small size is a definite bonus.
21-Dec-2007 04:15
There is a better way. www.php.net/touch
Since you're not adding anything to the file,
<?php
function updateFile($filename) {
if (!file_exists($filename)) return;
touch($filename);
}
?>
04-Oct-2007 09:20
I was in need of a function that updated the last modified date in a php file. There may be a better way, but this is how I did it:
<?php
function updateFile($modFile){
if(!empty($modFile)){
if($fo = fopen($modFile, 'r')){
$source = '';
while (!feof($fo)) {
$source .= fgets($fo);
}
file_put_contents($modFile,$source);
fclose($fo);
}
}
}
?>
21-Dec-2006 12:20
As to the previous user note, it would be wise to include that code within a conditional statement, as to prevent re-defining file_put_contents and the FILE_APPEND constant in PHP 5:
<?php
if ( !function_exists('file_put_contents') && !defined('FILE_APPEND') ) {
...
}
?>
Also, if the file could not be accessed for writing, the function should return boolean false, not 0. An error is different from 0 bytes written, in this case.
23-Jul-2006 01:11
In reply to the previous note:
If you want to emulate this function in PHP4, you need to return the bytes written as well as support for arrays, flags.
I can only figure out the FILE_APPEND flag and array support. If I could figure out "resource context" and the other flags, I would include those too.
<?
define('FILE_APPEND', 1);
function file_put_contents($n, $d, $flag = false) {
$mode = ($flag == FILE_APPEND || strtoupper($flag) == 'FILE_APPEND') ? 'a' : 'w';
$f = @fopen($n, $mode);
if ($f === false) {
return 0;
} else {
if (is_array($d)) $d = implode($d);
$bytes_written = fwrite($f, $d);
fclose($f);
return $bytes_written;
}
}
?>
06-Mar-2006 08:01
To clear up what was said by pvenegas+php at gmail dot com on 11-Oct-2005 08:13, file_put_contents() will replace the file by default. Here's the complete set of rules this function follows when accessing a file:
1. Was FILE_USE_INCUDE_PATH passed in the call? If so, check the include path for an existing copy of *filename*.
2. Does the file already exist? If not, first create it in the current working directory. Either way, open the file.
3. Was LOCK_EX passed in the call? If so, lock the file.
4. Was the function called with FILE_APPEND? If not, clear the file's contents. Otherwise, move to the end of the file.
5. Write *data* into the file.
6. Close the file and release any locks.
If you don't want to completely replace the contents of the file you're writing to, be sure to use FILE_APPEND (same as fopen() with 'a') in the *flags*. If you don't, whatever used to be there will be gone (fopen() with 'w').
Hope that helps someone (and that it makes sense ^^)!
- Sendoshin
21-May-2004 04:11
This functionality is now implemented in the PEAR package PHP_Compat.
More information about using this function without upgrading your version of PHP can be found on the below link:
http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_Compat
