Beginner PHP Tutorial - 79 - File Handling: Appending a File Video Lecture | PHP for Absolute Beginners: From Novice to PHP Master - Web Development

hello this alex from PHP academy' and
it's another video for the new boston on
a pending data onto the end of a file or
the contents inside the file so we've
already established we've opened up
names.txt with the property of writes
rewriting to it we've written the name
Alex and Billy and we also have closed
the file and then given a written
confirmation so what I'm actually going
to do now is I'm going to open up the
file itself so ya names.txt now what
happens if I want to add to this list so
I'm going to change this to a ok now I'm
going to put Steve Boop Steven that's
fine and I'm going to put Tom so what
I've done now is I've written and I've
already written the name in fact let's
just get rid of that I've already
written aims2 to this file if we go back
and have a look
refresh it Alex and Billy now what I
want to do is say another line break
after Billy write the name Steven and
then another line break and this is
appending whereas before if we were
doing W it would overwrite everything in
the file so if we use a and we go back
and we click on file we can see that
it's simply added it to the to the end
of the list now if we go back I'll show
you an example in case you haven't
caught it if I was to just do a W now
watch what happens when I run the file
so file dot PHP we go back you can see
now that we just have the name Steven
and we have that line break before that
so you can now understand the importance
of using the W or the append now why do
we have these two these two features
obviously we need to at once at one
instant we need to open up a file and
write to it
and then we closed it and we may never
need to use it again however in most
cases we'll be opening up a file and
rewriting names to where and I'm going
to give you a real-life example let's
say we'll just tighten this code up a
bit here and we're going to keep it as a
pend I'm going to get rid of this just
here for now now I'm going to come under
here and I'm going to create a form and
the action of the form is going to be
filed PHP the file we're currently using
and the method is going to be post now
what I'm going to do is end the form and
I'm going to specify a form field for
the user to enter a name so name and
then input type equals text name equals
name I'm going to break down a couple
more lines and input type equals submit
and the value of that is submit so this
is what we're displaying to the user
okay so let's just comment out this code
for now and preview our form and we can
see what it looks like all know that's
name stop txt file PHP okay so this is
what it looks like and let's just get
rid of names
txt
okay so we've got rid of names.txt if we
open up browser we can see that that's
now gone now what we need to do is we
need to this this is automatically this
data is automatically going to be posted
as we've seen before with our handling
so what we need to do is before we
create this in fact we'll get rid of
that altogether what we want to do is we
want to perform a check to see if this
variable is set so if name is set
remember we're posting this from here so
we're using the dollar underscore post
because we've set the method to post and
we're using the is set function to check
this has been set so if it has been set
we can specify this variable so I'm
going to say name equals and dollar
underscore post name okay and now what
we want to do is we want to say if not
empty name else
and in here we can just do an error
message please type in or dear type a
name okay so in here what we want to do
now is if the user has entered a name
we're all okay so we can just test the
functionality of this now on file dot
PHP so I'm going to type in a name Alex
click Submit so that's okay
if we don't type anything in it prompts
us to type a name so this is all very
well and good but now we're inside here
what we want to do we want to open up a
handle and we want to open names.txt and
we want to open up this to append now
when we want to do is F right and we
want to write to handle so what data do
we want to write to this we want to
write name now we want to append on a
line break so a foot backslash and n so
all the functionality of this program is
we're asking the user to enter names and
every time they click Submit and they
submit a new name it's going to write it
to a new line in this file so this is a
real life example of where you can store
data for your user input now we're going
to say F close you'll import an F close
and we're going to say handle inside
that so now let's check if it works at
the moment if we go back to our file
handling directory we've got no names
txt but once we type in name in and
click Submit
we haven't given a confirmation message
but all we can do is we can go back to
the here you can see that a names that
txt file exists and we've got Alex in
there so let's go back again and type a
new name in click Submit ok and let's
type in Steve verm over here and we can
type Tom while we're here as well so
submit so now if we go back to file
handling directory and looking our names
txt we can see that this is appended
each name that we've processed through
the form that's appended that on to the
end or the end of the content of this
file so that's about it for appending
and in the next tutorial we're going to
be look at reading this data in and then
displaying it back out to the user