PHP Tutorial Tutorials - PHP File Open

The PHP fopen() function is used to open a file.
Syntax:

fopen ( string $filename , string $mode ) : resource

The first parameter $filename specifies the name of the file you want to open.
The $mode parameter specifies in which mode the file should be opened.
The return value is a resource handle.

<?php
    $handle = fopen("data.txt", "r");
?>

PHP Open File Mode

The file may be opened in one of the following modes:

We can use file_exists() function to check if the file exists before trying to open it.

<?php
$filename = "data.txt";
 
if(file_exists($filename)){
    $handle = fopen($filename, "r"); // Open in `read-only` mode
} else{
    echo "The file $filename does not exist";
}
?>