File Handling Introduction

PHP lets you store data in text files on a server. This may for example be used to store data entered in an HTML form. You may then read the data from the file and display it in a web page or use it for other purposes.

Below is a basic PHP example that stores data from a PHP variable in a file on a server. The file is located in the same direcory as the PHP page that writes the data file.

$fileName = "mydata.txt"; 

$file=fopen($fileName,"w"); // Open the file with "w" access to replace the existing data
fputs($file, $comment);     // Write the new data to the file
fclose($file);              // Close the file

The example above will replace any previous contents in the file with the new data. If you want to keep the old contents of the file and append the data from the PHP variable(s) you must open the file in the "a" append mode, $file=fopen($fileName,"a");, as shown below:

$fileName = "mydatabase.txt"; 

$file=fopen($fileName,"a");   // Open the file with "a" access to append data
fputs($file, $comment."\n");  // Append the new data + a linefeed to the end of the file
fclose($file);                // Close the file

See:
Counter Example
Form To File Example