Is there a limit on PHP file_get_contents?

php file-get-contents large-files
Scott Foster picture Scott Foster · Sep 27, 2012 · Viewed 18.5k times · Source

I am trying to read a large file (10M) using php file_get_contents

$file = 'http://www.remoteserver.com/test.txt';
$data = file_get_contents( $file );
var_dump ( $data );

It dumps back

string(32720)

and then the output with only showing part of the file. Is there a limit somewhere of file_get_contents? I tried doing ini_set('memory_limit', '512M'), but that did not work.

EDIT: ** forgot to mention ** it's a remote file.

PROBLEM RESOLVED:: Out of HDD space. Fixed that and now everything works.

Answer

Lix picture Lix · Sep 27, 2012

Assuming the contents of the file you want to load are logically separated by line breaks (eg: not a binary file), then you might be better off reading line by line. 

$fp = fopen($path_to_file, "r");  
$fileLines = array();
while (!feof($fp)){
  array_push(fgets($fp),$fileContents);
} 
fclose($$fp);

You could always implode() (with your choice of line break character) the array back to a single string if you really need the file in one "chunk".

Reference -

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