Using Phar Archives: the phar stream wrapper

The Phar stream wrapper fully supports fopen() for read and write (not append), unlink(), stat(), fstat(), fseek(), rename() and directory stream operations opendir() and rmdir() and mkdir().

Individual file compression and per-file metadata can also be manipulated in a Phar archive using stream contexts:

<?php
$context 
stream_context_create(array('phar' =>
                                    array(
'compress' => Phar::GZ)),
                                    array(
'metadata' => array('user' => 'cellog')));
file_put_contents('phar://my.phar/somefile.php'0$context);
?>

The phar stream wrapper does not operate on remote files, and cannot operate on remote files, and so is allowed even when the allow_url_fopen and allow_url_include INI options are disabled.

Although it is possible to create phar archives from scratch just using stream operations, it is best to use the functionality built into the Phar class. The stream wrapper is best used for read-only operations.

User Contributed Notes

staff at pro-unreal dot de 08-Jun-2011 10:52
Please note that the phar stream wrapper does not work with any glob.
When you decide to move your project to phar archives you need to consider this.

The following won't work:
<?php
glob
('phar://some.phar/*');
new
DirectoryIterator('glob://phar://some.phar/*');
?>

While the following will work:
<?php
new DirectoryIterator('phar://some.phar/');
?>
carl at dot dot com 09-May-2011 12:12
Some Examples of how to use the stream wrapper would be really helpful. 
My floundering attempts reveal only the following:

<?php
$p
= new PharData(dirname(__FILE__).'/phartest.zip', 0,'phartest',Phar::ZIP) ;

$p->addFromString('testfile.txt',
'this is just some test text');

// This works
echo file_get_contents('phar://phartest.zip/testfile.txt');

//This Fails
file_put_contents('phar://phartest.zip/testfile.txt',
'Thist is text for testfile.txt');

$context = stream_context_create(
array(
'phar' =>array('compress' =>Phar::ZIP))
) ;

//This Fails
file_put_contents(
'phar://phartest.zip/testfile.txt',
'Thist is text for testfile.txt',0,$context);

// This works but only with 'r' readonly mode.
$f = fopen(
'phar://C:\\Inetpub\\wwwroot\\PACT\\test\\phartest.zip\\testfile.txt',
'r') ;
?>