Can you write PHP in Notepad++?

The fopen() function is also used to create a file. Maybe a little confusing, but in PHP, a file is created using the same function used to open files.

If you use fopen() on a file that does not exist, it will create it, given that the file is opened for writing (w) or appending (a).

The example below creates a new file called "testfile.txt". The file will be created in the same directory where the PHP code resides:

Example

$myfile = fopen("testfile.txt", "w")

PHP File Permissions

If you are having errors when trying to get this code to run, check that you have granted your PHP file access to write information to the hard drive.

PHP Write to File - fwrite()

The fwrite() function is used to write to a file.

The first parameter of fwrite() contains the name of the file to write to and the second parameter is the string to be written.

The example below writes a couple of names into a new file called "newfile.txt":

Example

$myfile = fopen("newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
$txt = "John Doe\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
$txt = "Jane Doe\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
?>

Notice that we wrote to the file "newfile.txt" twice. Each time we wrote to the file we sent the string $txt that first contained "John Doe" and second contained "Jane Doe". After we finished writing, we closed the file using the fclose() function.

If we open the "newfile.txt" file it would look like this:

PHP Overwriting

Now that "newfile.txt" contains some data we can show what happens when we open an existing file for writing. All the existing data will be ERASED and we start with an empty file.

In the example below we open our existing file "newfile.txt", and write some new data into it:

Example

$myfile = fopen("newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
$txt = "Mickey Mouse\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
$txt = "Minnie Mouse\n";
fwrite($myfile, $txt);
fclose($myfile);
?>

If we now open the "newfile.txt" file, we will see that Donald Duck and Goofy Goof is appended to the end of the file:

Generally, a PHP file contains HTML tags and some PHP scripting code. It is very easy to create a simple PHP example. To do so, create a file and write HTML tags + PHP code and save this file with .php extension.

Note: PHP statements ends with semicolon (;).

All PHP code goes between the php tag. It starts with . The syntax of PHP tag is given below:

Let's see a simple PHP example where we are writing some text using PHP echo command.

File: first.php

Output:

How to run PHP programs in XAMPP

How to run PHP programs in XAMPP PHP is a popular backend programming language. PHP programs can be written on any editor, such as - Notepad, Notepad++, Dreamweaver, etc. These programs save with .php extension, i.e., filename.php inside the htdocs folder.

For example - p1.php.

As I'm using window, and my XAMPP server is installed in D drive. So, the path for the htdocs directory will be "D:\xampp\htdocs".

PHP program runs on a web browser such as - Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. Below some steps are given to run the PHP programs.

Step 1: Create a simple PHP program like hello world.

Step 2: Save the file with hello.php name in the htdocs folder, which resides inside the xampp folder.

Note: PHP program must be saved in the htdocs folder, which resides inside the xampp folder, where you installed the XAMPP. Otherwise it will generate an error - Object not found.

Step 3: Run the XAMPP server and start the Apache and MySQL.

Step 4: Now, open the web browser and type localhost http://localhost/hello.php on your browser window.

Step 5: The output for the above hello.php program will be shown as the screenshot below:

Most of the time, PHP programs run as a web server module. However, PHP can also be run on CLI (Command Line Interface).

PHP Case Sensitivity

In PHP, keyword (e.g., echo, if, else, while), functions, user-defined functions, classes are not case-sensitive. However, all variable names are case-sensitive.

In the below example, you can see that all three echo statements are equal and valid:

Output:

Hello world using echo
Hello world using ECHO
Hello world using EcHo

Look at the below example that the variable names are case sensitive. You can see the example below that only the second statement will display the value of the $color variable. Because it treats $color, $ColoR, and $COLOR as three different variables:

Output:

Notice: Undefined variable: ColoR in D:\xampp\htdocs\program\p2.php on line 8
My car is
My dog is black

Notice: Undefined variable: COLOR in D:\xampp\htdocs\program\p2.php on line 10
My Phone is

Only $color variable has printed its value, and other variables $ColoR and $COLOR are declared as undefined variables. An error has occurred in line 5 and line 7.

Can PHP be done in Notepad?

How to run PHP code in Notepad++?

How do I open a PHP file in Notepad?

Where can I write my PHP code?