Syntax

• Every stream has a scheme and a target:
• <scheme>://<target>

Parameters

Parameter Name |Description | ––––––– | ––––– | Stream Resource| The data provider consisting of the <scheme>://<target> syntax |

Remarks

Streams are essentially a transfer of data between an origin and a destination, to paraphrase Josh Lockhart in his book Modern PHP.

The origin and the destination can be

• a file
• a command-line process
• a network connection
• a ZIP or TAR archive
• temporary memory
• standard input/output

or any other resource available via PHP’s stream wrappers.

Examples of available stream wrappers (schemes):

• file:// — Accessing local filesystem
• http:// — Accessing HTTP(s) URLs
• ftp:// — Accessing FTP(s) URLs
• php:// — Accessing various I/O streams