Is there a way to access a string as a filehandle in php?

Question

I\'m on a server where I\'m limited to PHP 5.2.6 which means str_getcsv is not available to me. I\'m using, instead fgetcsv which requires \"A valid file pointer to a file s

Answer 1

To answer your general question, yes you can treat a variable as a file stream.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.stream-context-create.php

The following is a copy and paste from a few different comments on the PHP manual (so I cannot vouch for how production ready it is):

varname = $url["host"];
        $this->position = 0;
        return true;
    }
    public function stream_read($count) {
        $p=&$this->position;
        $ret = substr($GLOBALS[$this->varname], $p, $count);
        $p += strlen($ret);
        return $ret;
    }
    public function stream_write($data){
        $v=&$GLOBALS[$this->varname];
        $l=strlen($data);
        $p=&$this->position;
        $v = substr($v, 0, $p) . $data . substr($v, $p += $l);
        return $l;
    }
    public function stream_tell() {
        return $this->position;
    }
    public function stream_eof() {
        return $this->position >= strlen($GLOBALS[$this->varname]);
    }
    public function stream_seek($offset, $whence) {
        $l=strlen(&$GLOBALS[$this->varname]);
        $p=&$this->position;
        switch ($whence) {
            case SEEK_SET: $newPos = $offset; break;
            case SEEK_CUR: $newPos = $p + $offset; break;
            case SEEK_END: $newPos = $l + $offset; break;
            default: return false;
        }
        $ret = ($newPos >=0 && $newPos <=$l);
        if ($ret) $p=$newPos;
        return $ret;
    }
}

stream_wrapper_register("var", "VariableStream");
$csv = "foo,bar\ntest,1,2,3\n";

$row = 1;
if (($handle = fopen("var://csv", "r")) !== FALSE) {
    while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) !== FALSE) {
        $num = count($data);
        echo "
 $num fields in line $row: 
\n";
        $row++;
        for ($c=0; $c < $num; $c++) {
            echo $data[$c] . "
\n";
        }
    }
    fclose($handle);
}
?>

Of course, for your particular example, there are simpler stream methods that can be used.