How To Read Data from Keyboard (Standard Input) in PHP?

If you want to read data from the standard input, usually the keyboard, you can use the fopen("php://stdin") function. It creates a special file handle linking to the standard input, and returns the file handle. Once the standard input is opened to a file handle, you can use fgets() to read one line at a time from the standard input like a regular file. Remember fgets() also includes "\n" at the end of the returning string. Here is a PHP script example on how to read from standard input:

<?php
$stdin = fopen("php://stdin", "r");
print("What's your name?\n");
$name = fgets($stdin);
print("Hello $name!\n");
fclose($stdin);
?>

This script will print:

What's your name?
Leo
Hello Leo
!

"!" is showing on the next line, because $name includes "\n" returned by fgets(). You can use rtrim() to remove "\n".

If you are using your script in a Web page, there is no standard input.

If you don't want to open the standard input as a file handle yourself, you can use the constant STDIN predefined by PHP as the file handle for standard input.

⇒ Opening Standard Output as a File Handle in PHP

⇐ Writing an Array to a File without File Handle in PHP

⇑ Reading and Writing Files in PHP

⇑⇑ PHP Tutorials