How to Append User Form Data to a TXT File Using PHP?

How to Write File Input to a TXT File in PHP

When creating a form to capture user input, it can be useful to save the data to a text file for storage or further processing. This can be accomplished with a few simple PHP commands.

PHP File

<?php
if(isset($_POST['field1']) && isset($_POST['field2'])) {
    $data = $_POST['field1'] . '-' . $_POST['field2'] . "\r\n";
    $ret = file_put_contents('/tmp/mydata.txt', $data, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX);
    if($ret === false) {
        die('There was an error writing this file');
    }
    else {
        echo "$ret bytes written to file";
    }
}
else {
   die('no post data to process');
}
?>

HTML Form

<form action="myprocessingscript.php" method="POST">
    <input name="field1" type="text" />
    <input name="field2" type="text" />
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Save Data">
</form>

Explanation

1. Form Processing: When the form is submitted, the myprocessingscript.php file is invoked.
2. Input Validation: The PHP script checks if the required input fields, field1 and field2, are set.
3. Data Preparation: The user input is concatenated into a single line of text, separated by a dash.
4. File Writing: Using the file_put_contents function, the data is appended to the specified text file, /tmp/mydata.txt, with exclusive file locking.
5. Error Handling: In case of any writing error, the script halts with an error message.
6. Success Confirmation: If successful, the script displays the number of bytes written to the file.

This solution automatically opens, writes, and closes the text file, handling the file I/O operations for you. Note that you can modify the target text file path as needed.

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