CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpfileline
Sang Froid
Sang Froid

Reputation: 983

PHP: Read Specific Line From File

I'm trying to read a specific line from a text file using php. Here's the text file: 

foo  
foo2

How would I get the content of the second line using php? This returns the first line:

<?php 
$myFile = "4-24-11.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'r');
$theData = fgets($fh);
fclose($fh);
echo $theData;
?>

..but I need the second.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Upvotes: 69

Views: 120210

Answers (12)

cantelope
cantelope

Reputation: 1165

This question is quite old by now, but for anyone dealing with very large files, here is a solution that does not involve reading every preceding line. This was also the only solution that worked in my case for a file with ~160 million lines.

<?php
function rand_line($fileName) {
    do{
        $fileSize=filesize($fileName);
        $fp = fopen($fileName, 'r');
        fseek($fp, rand(0, $fileSize));
        $data = fread($fp, 4096);  // assumes lines are < 4096 characters
        fclose($fp);
        $a = explode("\n",$data);
    }while(count($a)<2);
    return $a[1];
}

echo rand_line("file.txt");  // change file name
?>

It works by opening the file without reading anything, then moving the pointer instantly to a random position, reading up to 4096 characters from that point, then grabbing the first complete line from that data.

Upvotes: 5

Phil
Phil

Reputation: 4069

I would use the SplFileObject class...

$file = new SplFileObject("filename");
if (!$file->eof()) {
     $file->seek($lineNumber);
     $contents = $file->current(); // $contents would hold the data from line x
}

Upvotes: 23

drugan
drugan

Reputation: 829

I like daggett answer but there is another solution you can get try if your file is not big enough.

$file = __FILE__; // Let's take the current file just as an example.

$start_line = __LINE__ -1; // The same with the line what we look for. Take the line number where $line variable is declared as the start.

$lines_to_display = 5; // The number of lines to display. Displays only the $start_line if set to 1. If $lines_to_display argument is omitted displays all lines starting from the $start_line.

echo implode('', array_slice(file($file), $start_line, lines_to_display));

Upvotes: 1

Devin Camenares
Devin Camenares

Reputation: 9

You could try looping until the line you want, not the EOF, and resetting the variable to the line each time (not adding to it). In your case, the 2nd line is the EOF. (A for loop is probably more appropriate in my code below).

This way the entire file is not in the memory; the drawback is it takes time to go through the file up to the point you want.

<?php 
$myFile = "4-24-11.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'r');
$i = 0;
while ($i < 2)
 {
  $theData = fgets($fh);
  $i++
 }
fclose($fh);
echo $theData;
?>

Upvotes: 0

mineroot
mineroot

Reputation: 1666

If you use PHP on Linux, you may try the following to read text for example between 74th and 159th lines:

$text = shell_exec("sed -n '74,159p' path/to/file.log");

This solution is good if your file is large.

Upvotes: 4

Sunit
Sunit

Reputation: 397

Use stream_get_line: stream_get_line — Gets line from stream resource up to a given delimiter Source: http://php.net/manual/en/function.stream-get-line.php

Upvotes: 0

nimmneun
nimmneun

Reputation: 1159

omg I'm lacking 7 rep to make comments. This is @Raptor's & @Tomm's comment, since this question still shows up way high in google serps.

He's exactly right. For small files file($file); is perfectly fine. For large files it's total overkill b/c php arrays eat memory like crazy.

I just ran a tiny test with a *.csv with a file size of ~67mb (1,000,000 lines):

$t = -microtime(1);
$file = '../data/1000k.csv';
$lines = file($file);
echo $lines[999999]
    ."\n".(memory_get_peak_usage(1)/1024/1024)
    ."\n".($t+microtime(1));
//227.5
//0.22701287269592
//Process finished with exit code 0

And since noone mentioned it yet, I gave the SplFileObject a try, which I actually just recently discovered for myself.

$t = -microtime(1);
$file = '../data/1000k.csv';
$spl = new SplFileObject($file);
$spl->seek(999999);
echo $spl->current()
    ."\n".(memory_get_peak_usage(1)/1024/1024)
    ."\n".($t+microtime(1));
//0.5
//0.11500692367554
//Process finished with exit code 0

This was on my Win7 desktop so it's not representative for production environment, but still ... quite the difference.

Upvotes: 46

balanv
balanv

Reputation: 10898

you can use the following to get all the lines in the file

$handle = @fopen('test.txt', "r");

if ($handle) { 
   while (!feof($handle)) { 
       $lines[] = fgets($handle, 4096); 
   } 
   fclose($handle); 
} 


print_r($lines);

and $lines[1] for your second line

Upvotes: 8

user557846
user557846

Reputation: 

$myFile = "4-24-11.txt";
$lines = file($myFile);//file in to an array
echo $lines[1]; //line 2

file — Reads entire file into an array

Upvotes: 102

Phoenix
Phoenix

Reputation: 4536

$myFile = "4-21-11.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'r');
while(!feof($fh))
{
    $data[] = fgets($fh);  
    //Do whatever you want with the data in here
    //This feeds the file into an array line by line
}
fclose($fh);

Upvotes: 6

Rikesh
Rikesh

Reputation: 26451

You have to loop the file till end of file. 

  while(!feof($file))
  {
     echo fgets($file). "<br />";
  }
  fclose($file);

Upvotes: 2

alex
alex

Reputation: 490637

If you wanted to do it that way...

$line = 0;

while (($buffer = fgets($fh)) !== FALSE) {
   if ($line == 1) {
       // This is the second line.
       break;
   }   
   $line++;
}

Alternatively, open it with file() and subscript the line with [1].

Upvotes: 21

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