PHP Files Writing to Many Filehandles Simultaneously

PHP Files

Writing to Many Filehandles Simultaneously

Problem

You want to send output to more than one filehandle; for example, you want to log messages to the screen and to a file.

Solution

Wrap your output with a loop that iterates through your filehandles:

       function multi_fwrite($fhs,$s,$length=NULL) {

            if (is_array($fhs)) {

                 if (is_null($length)) {

                      foreach($fhs as $fh) {

                           fwrite($fh,$s);

                      }

                 } else {

                      foreach($fhs as $fh) {

                           fwrite($fh,$s,$length);

                      }

                 }

            }

       }

       $fhs = array();

       $fhs['file'] = fopen('log.txt','w') or die($php_errormsg);

       $fhs['screen'] = fopen('php://stdout','w') or die($php_errormsg);

       multi_fwrite($fhs,'The space shuttle has landed.');

Discussion

If you don’t want to pass a length argument to fwrite() (or you always want to), you can eliminate that check from your multi_fwrite(). This version doesn’t contain a $length argument:

       function multi_fwrite($fhs,$s) {

            if (is_array($fhs)) {

                 foreach($fhs as $fh) {

            fwrite($fh,$s);

                 }

            }

       }