Reading files (fread, fgets, file) in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Reading files (fread, fgets, file)

📖 Scenario: You have a text file named quotes.txt that contains several inspirational quotes, one per line. You want to read this file in different ways using PHP to understand how file reading works.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to read a file using fread, fgets, and file functions in PHP by creating a script that reads and displays the contents of quotes.txt step-by-step.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a file handle to open quotes.txt for reading

Use fread to read the entire file content

Use fgets to read the file line by line

Use file function to read all lines into an array

Print the results after each reading method

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Reading files is a common task in web development, such as loading configuration files, logs, or user data stored in text files.

💼 Career

Understanding file reading methods in PHP is essential for backend developers working with file systems, data processing, and server-side scripting.

1

Open the file quotes.txt for reading

Create a variable called file and open quotes.txt in read mode using fopen.

PHP

<?php
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use fopen with the filename "quotes.txt" and mode "r" to open the file for reading.

2

Read the entire file content using fread

Create a variable called content and use fread with $file and filesize("quotes.txt") to read the whole file content.

PHP

<?php
$file = fopen("quotes.txt", "r");
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use fread with the file handle $file and the size of the file using filesize("quotes.txt").

3

Read the file line by line using fgets

Create a variable called lines as an empty array. Use a while loop with fgets($file) to read each line and append it to lines. Close the file after reading.

PHP

<?php
$file = fopen("quotes.txt", "r");
$content = fread($file, filesize("quotes.txt"));
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use rewind($file) to reset the file pointer before reading lines. Then use a while loop with fgets to read each line until the end of the file. Don't forget to close the file with fclose.

4

Read all lines at once using file and print all results

Create a variable called allLines and assign it the result of file("quotes.txt"). Then print content, lines, and allLines using print_r inside <pre> tags for readability.

PHP

<?php
$file = fopen("quotes.txt", "r");
$content = fread($file, filesize("quotes.txt"));

rewind($file);
$lines = [];
while (($line = fgets($file)) !== false) {
    $lines[] = $line;
}
fclose($file);

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use file("quotes.txt") to read all lines into an array. Use print_r inside <pre> tags to print content, lines, and allLines clearly.