I would like to know how it works and what the concept of streams is. I already used streams to get the input, I also know there are others to control the output. However, I would like to know the theory and where the idea comes from in PHP.
NOTE: I would like to know the idea of streams in general and not only in relation to input and output through the protocol php:// .
Thanks in advance.
php://stdin php://stdout and can be used with fopen , file_get_contents (read), file_put_contents (write) among other read functions (such as copy ).
Now for HTTP, ie WEB pages, you should use:
php://input php://output That can be used with fopen , file_get_contents (read), file_put_contents (write).
PHP can work with web as it can work on terminals (as a common program), so when using php://input on WEB you will get payload of requests like POST and PUT, if it was sent via HTTP request:
POST /foo/bar.php HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
foobar=boobaz&toofoo=ever
The file_get_contents('php://input') would return:
"foobar=boobaz&toofoo=ever"