PHP's file_get_contents in JavaScript

Here’s what our current JavaScript equivalent to PHP's file_get_contents looks like.

module.exports = functionfile_get_contents (url, flags, context, offset, maxLen) { // eslint-disable-line camelcase
//       discuss at: https://locutus.io/php/file_get_contents/
//      original by: Legaev Andrey
//         input by: Jani Hartikainen
//         input by: Raphael (Ao) RUDLER
//      improved by: Kevin van Zonneveld (https://kvz.io)
//      improved by: Brett Zamir (https://brett-zamir.me)
//      bugfixed by: Brett Zamir (https://brett-zamir.me)
// reimplemented by: Kevin van Zonneveld (https://kvz.io)
//           note 1: This used to work in the browser via blocking ajax
//           note 1: requests in 1.3.2 and earlier
//           note 1: but then people started using that for real app,
//           note 1: so we deprecated this behavior,
//           note 1: so this function is now Node-only
//        example 1: var $buf = file_get_contents('test/never-change.txt')
//        example 1: var $result = $buf.indexOf('hash') !== -1
//        returns 1: true
const fs = require('fs')
return fs.readFileSync(url, 'utf-8')
}

How to use

You you can install via npm install locutus and require it via require('locutus/php/filesystem/file_get_contents'). You could also require the filesystem module in full so that you could access filesystem.file_get_contents instead.

If you intend to target the browser, you can then use a module bundler such as Parcel, webpack, Browserify, or rollup.js. This can be important because Locutus allows modern JavaScript in the source files, meaning it may not work in all browsers without a build/transpile step. Locutus does transpile all functions to ES5 before publishing to npm.

A community effort

Not unlike Wikipedia, Locutus is an ongoing community effort. Our philosophy follows The McDonald’s Theory. This means that we don't consider it to be a bad thing that many of our functions are first iterations, which may still have their fair share of issues. We hope that these flaws will inspire others to come up with better ideas.

This way of working also means that we don't offer any production guarantees, and recommend to use Locutus inspiration and learning purposes only.

Notes

• This used to work in the browser via blocking ajax requests in 1.3.2 and earlier but then people started using that for real app, so we deprecated this behavior, so this function is now Node-only

Examples

Please note that these examples are distilled from test cases that automatically verify our functions still work correctly. This could explain some quirky ones.

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