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Reading files will allow you to
retrieve data from manipulation.

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But what if you want to share
this information with others?

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Writing files will allow us to
save any changes we make and

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also allow us to change settings and
update application details.

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Building upon the same methods we use for

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reading files, lets take a look at
a couple different ways to write files.

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We're going to combine our
states into a single file.

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Let's start with the new
file named combine.php.

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We'll start by opening a new file for
writing line by line.

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Once again, we use fopen.

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We'll call this data/html/combined.html.

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This time for the mode,
we use w for write.

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This tells a function to open the file for
writing only.

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It places the file pointer at
the beginning of the file and

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truncates the file to zero length.

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This has the effect of erasing the file,
so be careful when you use it.

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If the file does not exist,
it will attempt to create it.

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Again, I'll surround the statement
with the conditional, so

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we don't try to write to
a file we can't access.

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Then within the conditional,
I'll close the file.

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We then start writing to the file
using the fwrite function.

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Like with fgets we pass the handler
that we used in the fopen statement.

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This time, we also passed
the string we want to write.

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I want to start with
the original states file.

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So I can use file_ get_ contents,

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data/html/states.html.

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Next, I want to write
the territories within an opt group.

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Again, I can use the file_get_contents,
and

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this time I'll use
data/html/territories.html.

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Now, do the same thing for
the Armed Forces.

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We already finished with fclose.

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So, let's add a select and
include the file we just wrote so

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that we can check this out in the browser.

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Great, now we have a single file
to use first state dropdown.

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If you view the source, you can see
that it's a little hard to read

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because we don't have proper line breaks.

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Let's go back and add those.

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A good way to add line breaks to a file
is with the predefined constant PHP_EOL.

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This will add the correct
end of line symbol for

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the platform where the script is running.

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We'll add this before all but
the first write.

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Now, we may refresh the source.

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Our line breaks show up nicely
making the file easier to read.

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Let's go back to work spaces and
look at writing the entire file at once.