Reading and Saving Data with PHP
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Hello everyone,
This tutorial on saving text in PHP to a file is for the Wacky Weekend Contest #2
Wacky Weekend Contest #2
PHP 5 has a function called file_put_contents which is used to write a string to a file. For this tutorial I am not going to explain how to setup a server and assume you already have a running server with PHP. I am using Xampp and doing this on the localhost.
We will create a new variable to hold the name of the file, note when writing to the file, if it doesn't exist then it will create a new file with the name you provided.
We need to append text to our variable being writing it back to the file. To do this in PHP you use .= and then put the text you want to add, with \n on the end of the text so we know it's a new line.
SmashApps
Codenstuff
Now we just need to write our text to the file.
Let's create a separate page for adding text, and a separate page for reading the text.
Create two Php files called read.php and write.php
write.php will contain a form that let's you enter what text you want added to the file, and then it will take us to write text.php where the text is then written to the text file, then click the link to go to read.php to read the contents of the text file.
Write.php
Write text.php
Read.php
Hopefully the tutorial was easy follow, and in case you didn't follow all of it it showed how to write and save data using variables, and also by submitting the text in an HTML form.
This tutorial on saving text in PHP to a file is for the Wacky Weekend Contest #2
Wacky Weekend Contest #2
PHP 5 has a function called file_put_contents which is used to write a string to a file. For this tutorial I am not going to explain how to setup a server and assume you already have a running server with PHP. I am using Xampp and doing this on the localhost.
We will create a new variable to hold the name of the file, note when writing to the file, if it doesn't exist then it will create a new file with the name you provided.
Code: Select all
Now we want to open the file and grab everything out of it, let's create a variable to store everything in our file. <?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
?>
Code: Select all
Now we will have a variable called fileContents which should contain our files contents. <?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
?>
We need to append text to our variable being writing it back to the file. To do this in PHP you use .= and then put the text you want to add, with \n on the end of the text so we know it's a new line.
Code: Select all
The text should display as:<?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
$fileContents .= “SmashApps\r\nCodenstuff\r\n”;
?>
SmashApps
Codenstuff
Now we just need to write our text to the file.
Code: Select all
We have so far covered how to write/save data to a file, we have read the file too but let's now display the contents on the screen. <?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
$fileContents .= “SmashApps\r\nCodenstuff\r\n”;
file_put_contents($fileName, $fileContents);
?>
Code: Select all
We simply echo the $fileContents variable onto the screen, I added HTML to neaten up the page a bit. It's not required obviously but makes it nicer to read on the eye. Some things to note are that every time you reload the page you are going to have the same contents written over and over again onto the page, maybe you want to just choose what you want written to the text file. <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Reading and writing to a text file</title>
<style>
body {
font-family:Calibri;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
$fileContents .= "SmashApps\r\nCodenstuff\r\n";
file_put_contents($fileName, $fileContents);
echo "The text below is what is contained in this file: "; echo "<b>"; echo $fileName; echo "</b><p><hr></p>";
echo $fileContents;
?>
</body>
</html>
Let's create a separate page for adding text, and a separate page for reading the text.
Create two Php files called read.php and write.php
write.php will contain a form that let's you enter what text you want added to the file, and then it will take us to write text.php where the text is then written to the text file, then click the link to go to read.php to read the contents of the text file.
Write.php
Code: Select all
Fill in the textarea below then click Submit to write it to the file. <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Reading and writing to a text file</title>
<style>
body {
font-family:Calibri;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
Code: Select all
This is our form which sends the message in the textarea control to our php file write text<form action="write text.php" method="post">
<textarea name="content" rows="12" cols="28">
All text in here will be written to the file on the server "codenstuff.txt"
</textarea></br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
Write text.php
Code: Select all
This writes everything to the text file from the form we filled in<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Reading and writing to a text file</title>
<style>
body {
font-family:Calibri;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
$fileContents .= $_POST["content"];
file_put_contents($fileName, $fileContents);
echo "The text has been writting to the file "; echo "<b>"; echo $fileName; echo "</b><p><hr></p>";
echo "<a href='read.php'>Click here to read the contents of the file</a>";
?>
</body>
</html>
Read.php
Code: Select all
This displays the text on the screen, the only lines of code to take note of are these:<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Reading and writing to a text file</title>
<style>
body {
font-family:Calibri;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<?php
$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
echo $fileContents;
?>
</body>
</html>
Code: Select all
fileName is the name of the file we are reading, then fileContents uses the file_get_contents function to read the file based on which file name we put in before and then echo displays the contents of the file onto the screen.$fileName = 'codenstuff.txt';
$fileContents = file_get_contents($fileName);
echo $fileContents;
Hopefully the tutorial was easy follow, and in case you didn't follow all of it it showed how to write and save data using variables, and also by submitting the text in an HTML form.
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