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Last updated: Fri, 01 Jun 2007

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Appendix O. List of Supported Protocols/Wrappers

Table of Contents

Filesystem
Socket
HTTP and HTTPS
FTP and FTPS
PHP input/output streams
Compression Streams
Data (RFC 2397)
Secure Shell 2
Audio Streams
Process Interaction Streams

The following is a list of the various URL style protocols that PHP has built-in for use with the filesystem functions such as fopen() and copy(). In addition to these wrappers, as of PHP 4.3.0, you can write your own wrappers using PHP script and stream_wrapper_register().

Filesystem

All versions of PHP. Explicitly using file:// since PHP 4.3.0

  • /path/to/file.ext
  • relative/path/to/file.ext
  • fileInCwd.ext
  • C:/path/to/winfile.ext
  • C:\path\to\winfile.ext
  • \\smbserver\share\path\to\winfile.ext
  • file:///path/to/file.ext

Filesystem is the default wrapper used with PHP and represents the local filesystem. When a relative path is specified (a path which does not begin with /, \, \\, or a Windows drive letter) the path provided will be applied against the current working directory. In many cases this is the directory in which the script resides unless it has been changed. Using the CLI sapi, this defaults to the directory from which the script was called.

With some functions, such as fopen() and file_get_contents(), include_path may be optionally searched for relative paths as well.

Table O.1. Wrapper Summary

AttributeSupported
Restricted by allow_url_fopenNo
Allows ReadingYes
Allows WritingYes
Allows AppendingYes
Allows Simultaneous Reading and WritingYes
Supports stat()Yes
Supports unlink()Yes
Supports rename()Yes
Supports mkdir()Yes
Supports rmdir()Yes



add a note add a note User Contributed Notes
List of Supported Protocols/Wrappers
ben dot johansen at gmail dot com
25-Oct-2006 09:57
followup:

I found that if I added this line to the AJAX call, the values would show up in the $_POST

xhttp.setRequestHeader('Content-Type',
'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
ben dot johansen at gmail dot com
29-Aug-2006 06:02
Example of how to use the php://input to get raw post data

//read the raw data in
$roughHTTPPOST = file_get_contents("php://input");
//parse it into vars
parse_str($roughHTTPPOST);

if you do readfile("php://input") you will get the length of the post data
ben dot johansen at gmail dot com
29-Aug-2006 07:33
In trying to do AJAX with PHP and Javascript, I came upon an issue where the POST argument from the following javascript could not be read in via PHP 5 using the $_REQUEST or $_POST. I finally figured out how to read in the raw data using the php://input directive.
   
Javascript code:
=============
      //create request instance     
      xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
      // set the event handler
      xhttp.onreadystatechange = serviceReturn;
      // prep the call, http method=POST, true=asynchronous call
      var Args = 'number='+NbrValue;
      xhttp.open("POST", "http://<?php echo $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] ?>/webservices/ws_service.php", true);
      // send the call with args
      xhttp.send(Args);

PHP Code:
    //read the raw data in
    $roughHTTPPOST = file_get_contents("php://input");
    //parse it into vars
    parse_str($roughHTTPPOST);
heitorsiller at uol dot com dot br
07-Jul-2006 02:55
For reading a XML stream, this will work just fine:
<?php

$arq
= file_get_contents('php://input');

?>

Then you can parse the XML like this:

<?php

$xml
= xml_parser_create();

xml_parse_into_struct($xml, $arq, $vs);

xml_parser_free($xml);

$data = "";

foreach(
$vs as $v){

        if(
$v['level'] == 3 && $v['type'] == 'complete')
               
$data .= "\n".$v['tag']." -> ".$v['value'];
}

echo
$data;

?>

PS.: This is particularly useful for receiving mobile originated (MO) SMS messages from cellular phone companies.
opedroso at NOSPAMswoptimizer dot com
12-Apr-2006 06:07
php://input allows you to read raw POST data. It is a less memory intensive alternative to $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA and does not need any special php.ini directives.

Example use:

$httprawpostdata = file_get_contents("php://input");

When reading a base64 encoded stream using php://input, be aware that you do not need to decode it, it will automatically be done for you.
nyvsld at gmail dot com
27-Nov-2005 06:28
php://stdin supports fseek() and fstat() function call,
while php://input doesn't.
drewish at katherinehouse dot com
25-Sep-2005 06:50
Be aware that contrary to the way this makes it sound, under Apache, php://output and php://stdout don't point to the same place.

<?php
$fo
= fopen('php://output', 'w');
$fs = fopen('php://stdout', 'w');

fputs($fo, "You can see this with the CLI and Apache.\n");
fputs($fs, "This only shows up on the CLI...\n");

fclose($fo);
fclose($fs);
?>

Using the CLI you'll see:
  You can see this with the CLI and Apache.
  This only shows up on the CLI...

Using the Apache SAPI you'll see:
  You can see this with the CLI and Apache.
chris at free-source dot com
26-Apr-2005 07:52
If you're looking for a unix based smb wrapper there isn't one built in,  but I've had luck with http://www.zevils.com/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/libsmbclient-php/ (tarball link at the end).
nargy at yahoo dot com
24-Sep-2004 10:16
When opening php://output in append mode you get an error, the way to do it:
$fp=fopen("php://output","w");
fwrite($fp,"Hello, world !<BR>\n");
fclose($fp);
aidan at php dot net
27-May-2004 10:34
The contants:

* STDIN
* STDOUT
* STDERR

Were introduced in PHP 4.3.0 and are synomous with the fopen('php://stdx') result resource.
lupti at yahoo dot com
29-Nov-2003 10:04
I find using file_get_contents with php://input is very handy and efficient. Here is the code:

$request = "";
$request = file_get_contents("php://input");

I don't need to declare the URL filr string as "r". It automatically handles open the file with read.

I can then use this $request string to your XMLparser as data.
sam at bigwig dot net
15-Aug-2003 03:02
[ Editor's Note: There is a way to know.  All response headers (from both the final responding server and intermediate redirecters) can be found in $http_response_header or stream_get_meta_data() as described above. ]

If you open an HTTP url and the server issues a Location style redirect, the redirected contents will be read but you can't find out that this has happened.

So if you then parse the returned html and try and rationalise relative URLs you could get it wrong.

Socket> <List of Resource Types
Last updated: Fri, 01 Jun 2007
 
 
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