get the first 3 lines of a text file in php

Question

I am developing a website in PHP, and I must include in the index the first 3 lines of a text file in PHP. How can I do that?

<?php
$file = file_get_contents("text.txt");
//echo the first 3 lines, but it's wrong
echo $file;
?>

Answer 1

Even more simple:

<?php
$file_data = array_slice(file('file.txt'), 0, 3);
print_r($file_data);

Answer 2

Open the file, read lines, close the file:

// Open the file for reading
$file = 'file.txt';
$fh = fopen($file, 'rb');

// Handle failure
if ($fh === false) {
    die('Could not open file: '.$file);
}
// Loop 3 times
for ($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) {
    // Read a line
    $line = fgets($fh);

    // If a line was read then output it, otherwise
    // show an error
    if ($line !== false) {
        echo $line;
    } else {
        die('An error occurred while reading from file: '.$file);
    }
}
// Close the file handle; when you are done using a
// resource you should always close it immediately
if (fclose($fh) === false) {
    die('Could not close file: '.$file);
}

Answer 3

The file() function returns the lines of a file as an array. Unless the file is huge (multiple megabytes), you can then use array_slice to get the first 3 elements of this:

$lines = file('file.txt');
$first3 = array_slice($lines, 0, 3);
echo implode('', $first3);