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Streams Basics

Using streams is very much like using ANSI stdio functions. The main difference is in how you obtain the stream handle to begin with. In most cases, you will use php_stream_open_wrapper() to obtain the stream handle. This function works very much like fopen, as can be seen from the example below:

Example 43-1. simple stream example that displays the PHP home page
php_stream * stream = php_stream_open_wrapper("http://www.php.net", "rb", REPORT_ERRORS, NULL); if (stream) { while(!php_stream_eof(stream)) { char buf[1024]; if (php_stream_gets(stream, buf, sizeof(buf))) { printf(buf); } else { break; } } php_stream_close(stream); }

The table below shows the Streams equivalents of the more common ANSI stdio functions. Unless noted otherwise, the semantics of the functions are identical.

Table 43-1. ANSI stdio equivalent functions in the Streams API

ANSI Stdio Function	PHP Streams Function	Notes
fopen	php_stream_open_wrapper	Streams includes additional parameters
fclose	php_stream_close
fgets	php_stream_gets
fread	php_stream_read	The nmemb parameter is assumed to have a value of 1, so the prototype looks more like read(2)
fwrite	php_stream_write	The nmemb parameter is assumed to have a value of 1, so the prototype looks more like write(2)
fseek	php_stream_seek
ftell	php_stream_tell
rewind	php_stream_rewind
feof	php_stream_eof
fgetc	php_stream_getc
fputc	php_stream_putc
fflush	php_stream_flush
puts	php_stream_puts	Same semantics as puts, NOT fputs
fstat	php_stream_stat	Streams has a richer stat structure

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