What are some best practices for managing and updating text files in PHP applications?

When managing and updating text files in PHP applications, it is important to handle file operations carefully to avoid data loss or corruption. Best practices include using file locking to prevent concurrent writes, validating user input before writing to a file, and backing up files before making changes. 

// Example of updating a text file in a PHP application
$file = 'data.txt';

// Backup the original file
copy($file, $file . '.bak');

// Open the file for writing
$handle = fopen($file, 'w');

// Check if file is successfully opened
if ($handle) {
    // Write new data to the file
    fwrite($handle, 'New data to be written');

    // Close the file
    fclose($handle);
} else {
    echo 'Error opening file for writing';
}

Keywords

file handling fopen fwrite fclose file_get_contents

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