Creating and uploading a file in PHP to an FTP server without saving locally

Question

I\'m having a problem connecting two different processes that I have working. I\'ve been tasked with pulling data out of a database, creating a file from the data, and then

Answer 1

The easiest solution is using file_put_contents with FTP URL wrapper:

file_put_contents('ftp://username:pa‌​ssword@hostname/path/to/file', $out);

If it does not work, it's probably because you do not have URL wrappers enabled in PHP.

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If you need greater control over the writing (transfer mode, passive mode, offset, reading limit, etc), use the ftp_fput with a handle to the php://temp (or the php://memory) stream:

$conn_id = ftp_connect('hostname');

ftp_login($conn_id, 'username', 'password');
ftp_pasv($conn_id, true);

$h = fopen('php://temp', 'r+');
fwrite($h, $out);
rewind($h);

ftp_fput($conn_id, '/path/to/file', $h, FTP_BINARY, 0);

fclose($h);
ftp_close($conn_id);

(add error handling)

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Or you can open/create the file directly on the FTP server. That's particularly useful, if the file is large, as you won't have keep whole contents in memory.

See Generate CSV file on an external FTP server in PHP.