# fread

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

fread — Binary-safe file read

### Description

fread ( resource `$handle` , int `$length` ) : string

fread() reads up to `length` bytes from the file pointer referenced by `handle`. Reading stops as soon as one of the following conditions is met:

- `length` bytes have been read
- EOF (end of file) is reached
- a packet becomes available or the socket timeout occurs (for network streams)
- if the stream is read buffered and it does not represent a plain file, at most one read of up to a number of bytes equal to the chunk size (usually 8192) is made; depending on the previously buffered data, the size of the returned data may be larger than the chunk size.

### Parameters

`handle`

  A file system pointer resource that is typically created using fopen().

`length`

  Up to `length` number of bytes read.

### Return Values

Returns the read string or `FALSE` on failure.

### Examples

Example #1 A simple fread() example

`<?php
// get contents of a file into a string
$filename = "/usr/local/something.txt";
$handle = fopen($filename, "r");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
fclose($handle);
?>`

Example #2 Binary fread() example

Warning

On systems which differentiate between binary and text files (i.e. Windows) the file must be opened with 'b' included in fopen() mode parameter.

`<?php
$filename = "c:\\files\\somepic.gif";
$handle = fopen($filename, "rb");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize($filename));
fclose($handle);
?>`

Example #3 Remote fread() examples

Warning

When reading from anything that is not a regular local file, such as streams returned when reading remote files or from popen() and fsockopen(), reading will stop after a packet is available. This means that you should collect the data together in chunks as shown in the examples below.

`<?php
// For PHP 5 and up
$handle = fopen("http://www.example.com/", "rb");
$contents = stream_get_contents($handle);
fclose($handle);
?>`
`<?php
$handle = fopen("http://www.example.com/", "rb");
if (FALSE === $handle) {
exit("Failed to open stream to URL");
}
$contents = '';
while (!feof($handle)) {
$contents .= fread($handle, 8192);
}
fclose($handle);
?>`

### Notes

> Note:

> If you just want to get the contents of a file into a string, use file_get_contents() as it has much better performance than the code above.

> Note:

> Note that fread() reads from the current position of the file pointer. Use ftell() to find the current position of the pointer and rewind() to rewind the pointer position.

### See Also

- fwrite() - Binary-safe file write
- fopen() - Opens file or URL
- fsockopen() - Open Internet or Unix domain socket connection
- popen() - Opens process file pointer
- fgets() - Gets line from file pointer
- fgetss() - Gets line from file pointer and strip HTML tags
- fscanf() - Parses input from a file according to a format
- file() - Reads entire file into an array
- fpassthru() - Output all remaining data on a file pointer
- ftell() - Returns the current position of the file read/write pointer
- rewind() - Rewind the position of a file pointer
- unpack() - Unpack data from binary string