PHP: Create a Temporary File

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So you need a temporary file to hold some middle data. There are 2 functions in PHP you can use for creating temporary files:

1. PHP function tmpfile() creates a temporary file, opens it and returns the file handler:

   $temp_fh = tmpfile();
   f write($temp_fh, "The current time is ".strftime('%c'));
   // the file automatically goes away when the script ends

   Very handy for temporary uses.

2. PHP function tempnam() is a little more sophisticated in that it takes 2 parameters to create a custom file and returns the path to the new file:

   $tempfilename = tempnam('/tmp', 'data-');
   $temp_fh = f open($tempfilename, 'w');
   f write($temp_fh, "The current time is ".strftime('%c'));