PHP  
downloads | documentation | faq | getting help | mailing lists | | php.net sites | links | my php.net 
search for in the  
<PHP APIStreams Basics>
view the version of this page
Last updated: Sat, 19 Apr 2003

Kapitel 43. Streams API for PHP Extension Authors

Overview

The PHP Streams API introduces a unified approach to the handling of files and sockets in PHP extension. Using a single API with standard functions for common operations, the streams API allows your extension to access files, sockets, URLs, memory and script-defined objects. Streams is a run-time extensible API that allows dynamically loaded modules (and scripts!) to register new streams.

The aim of the Streams API is to make it comfortable for developers to open files, urls and other streamable data sources with a unified API that is easy to understand. The API is more or less based on the ANSI C stdio family of functions (with identical semantics for most of the main functions), so C programmers will have a feeling of familiarity with streams.

The streams API operates on a couple of different levels: at the base level, the API defines php_stream objects to represent streamable data sources. On a slightly higher level, the API defines php_stream_wrapper objects which "wrap" around the lower level API to provide support for retrieving data and meta-data from URLs.

Streams can be cast (converted) into other types of file-handles, so that they can be used with third-party libraries without a great deal of trouble. This allows those libraries to access data directly from URL sources. If your system has the fopencookie() or funopen() function, you can even pass any PHP stream to any library that uses ANSI stdio!

Anmerkung: The functions in this chapter are for use in the PHP source code and are not PHP functions. Userland stream functions can be found in the Stream Reference.



User Contributed Notes
Streams API for PHP Extension Authors
add a note
There are no user contributed notes for this page.

<PHP APIStreams Basics>
 Last updated: Sat, 19 Apr 2003
show source | credits | mirror sites 
Copyright © 2001-2003 The PHP Group
All rights reserved.
This mirror generously provided by: /
Last updated: Thu May 15 01:08:38 2003 CEST