Reading A File Video Lecture | PHP for beginners - Software Development

hello YouTube welcome to tutorial number
24 in the PHP programming tutorial
series and in this video we're going to
cover using the file get content
contents function to get the contents of
a file and put that into a string so
we'll start off our PHP file I'm gonna
save this as get file dot PHP and when
I'm just gonna put anything in here
right now we're gonna create a new file
click the new one here and this is going
to be our text file so inside here it's
gonna be an old text file we're going to
write and this is the first line this is
the second line and we'll just have
another space import of this is the
fourth line okay we have a nicely
formatted text documents we have the
first second third and fourth line we
have line break here here and then again
here to go into line four so we'd save
this we'll save this as document.txt
okay so now we have our text document we
want to read this using PHP and output
it to our web page so we can do this
using the file get contents function so
we're going to declare the file path up
here and we're gonna use a full stop and
then a forward slash that's gonna
represent that we're searching inside of
this directory that they get file PHP is
inside and then we're going to say
document dot txt so that is going to be
the fire were looking for save that okay
and now to use the file get contents
from chimney to create a variable to
store the response or what it returns
sorry so we're gonna call this document
and we're gonna set to the value as file
on the score get on the score contents
so the way to call use the get contents
function is simply type file on the
score gets underscore contents and then
in brackets here we need to specify the
file when you want to get the contents
off in this case it is file so we do
that
and what this is done now is if this
file exists it will retain the entire
file as a string inside of this document
variable and if it doesn't it will
return false so we should be able to
echo out this out no problem so it's
just a call in document and then we'll
save this get filed a PHP and you'll
notice that we don't have our line
breaks and that's because I'm right what
we're doing right now a PHP file this is
like HTML documents so we can't actually
use you'll see actually when we go to
our notepad here and it's actually in
new lines but what I'm gonna do now is
just I'm going to loop through each line
but I'll show you actually first what we
can do you can just specify header and
then in what's a content type and put it
to text on sorry text forward slash
plain and this will treat the document
like it's a normal text document like
it's this so if we load this you'll see
that the lines all formatted nice and
neatly but we don't want to do that
because if we do that then let's say we
want to you know echo out some HTML and
echo out break and then bold this is
bold and then end up there so if we want
to echo that inside to get far the PHP
you'll see that it doesn't recognize the
HTML so we can't do that so I'll be
practical for our web page so what I'm
going to do is gonna create a simple
loop so facing me to do is use the
explode function from a previous
tutorial
now the explode function I'm going to do
we're going to explode the file by a new
line or not not break but a text new
line and we can do this using backslash
and and that represents a new line so we
can declare a new variable called call
it lines almost at the value to explode
and then the backslash n and then the
second parameter we need to specify is
what we want to explode and it's going
to be the document because that's why
we're holding all of our
the file string so what we've done here
is we're just splitting up this document
string so this whole text file by each
new line using this and now we can do
what we want with those new lines so all
we need to do is we can just wait a for
each loop I think the best way to do it
okay we're going to say for each lines
as a new line I'm gonna simply echo out
echo new line and concatenate a break on
to that so let's just quickly run
through this so we've we don't need this
anymore by the way you can delete the
header content type text plane so here
we've specified the file you want to
search which is document dot txt
I'm saying it's inside the directory
that this file is in and then what we're
doing is getting the contents of that
file using the function file on the
scroll gate on the score contents and
now this variable documents now holds
this whole text file document dot txt as
a string but the problem is that it's
formatted in a text file so new lines
aren't recognized by the HTML as its
kind it's different so what we'll need
to do is make a new variable called
lines and we explode that using box fold
it by each new line and we're exposing
documents then we simply create for each
loop to look through each and every line
inside of this explode inside of the
result we got from the explode and we'll
just echo the actual line and then a
break so we say this and then we can
just load this and you'll see that it
recognizes the new lines view the source
code and we now have the breaks so it's
more it's formatted HTML use so now we
can go either haiti ml to it we can echo
out for each line we want we're gonna
have bold and then end the bold here
save it you can see we now have it bold
we can do whatever you want with it so
that's how to use the file get contents
function you can also use this to pass
web pages and I'll show you how to do
that in a feather tutorial so please
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