PHP fread() Function

The fread() reads from an open file.The function will stop at the end of the file or when it reaches the specified length, whichever comes first.This function returns the read string, or FALSE on failure.

string fread ( resource $handle , int $length )

fread() reads up to length bytes from the file pointer referenced by handle. Reading stops as soon as one of the following conditions is met:

length bytes have been read

EOF (end of file) is reached

a packet becomes available or the socket timeout occurs (for network streams)

if the stream is read buffered and it does not represent a plain file, at most one read of up to a number of bytes equal to the chunk size (usually 8192) is made; depending on the previously buffered data, the size of the returned data may be larger than the chunk size.

Example -

<?php // get contents of a file into a string $filename = "/usr/local/something.txt"; $handle = fopen($filename, "r"); $contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename)); fclose($handle); ?>

Example -

<?php $filename = "c:\\files\\somepic.gif"; $handle = fopen($filename, "rb"); $contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename)); fclose($handle); ?>

Example -

<?php // For PHP 5 and up $handle = fopen("http://www.example.com/", "rb"); $contents = stream_get_contents($handle); fclose($handle); ?>

Example -

<?php $handle = fopen("http://www.example.com/", "rb"); if (FALSE === $handle) { exit("Failed to open stream to URL"); } $contents = ''; while (!feof($handle)) { $contents .= fread($handle, 8192); } fclose($handle); ?>

Parameter	Description
file	Required. Specifies the open file to read from
length	Required. Specifies the maximum number of bytes to read