php warning fclose() expects parameter 1 to be resource boolean given

Question

I use newrelic to keep track of anything on my website and I always get this error:

Error message: E_WARNING: fclose() expects parameter 1 to be resou

Answer 1

I wrestled with this problem and could not find the answer until I separated my write check (put it first) from the actual file write code. So before I would open the file fopen/fwrite then do the is_writable check and then do the fclose and i would get this error.
To resolve I moved the is_writable and variable declaration before the fopen/fwrite and the error went away. Shown below (former php code position shown in comments) The first comment did help me realize this... Thank you.

$myfile = "/var/www/html/newfile.txt";

if (is_writable($myfile))  {
  echo  "The file is writable";
}
else {
  echo "The file is not writable";
}

$txt = "$name, $email, $command, $searchtype,  $keyword \n";
$myfile = fopen('/var/www/html/newfile.txt', 'w') or die("Unable to open file!");
fwrite($myfile, $txt);

// $myfile = "/var/www/html/newfile.txt";

// if (is_writable($myfile))  {
//  echo  "The file is writable";
// }
// else {
//   echo "The file is not writable";
// }

fclose($myfile);