FTP and FTPS

PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 6. ftps:// since PHP 4.3.0

• ftp://example.com/pub/file.txt
• ftp://user:[email protected]/pub/file.txt
• ftps://example.com/pub/file.txt
• ftps://user:[email protected]/pub/file.txt

Allows read access to existing files and creation of new files via FTP. If the server does not support passive mode ftp, the connection will fail.

You can open files for either reading or writing, but not both simultaneously. If the remote file already exists on the ftp server and you attempt to open it for writing but have not specified the context option overwrite, the connection will fail. If you need to overwrite existing files over ftp, specify the overwrite option in the context and open the file for writing. Alternatively, you can use the FTP extension.

Note: Appending
As of PHP 5.0.0 files may be appended via the ftp:// URL wrapper. In prior versions, attempting to append to a file via ftp:// will result in failure.

ftps:// was introduced in PHP 4.3.0. It is the same as ftp://, but attempts to negotiate a secure connection with the ftp server. If the server does not support SSL, then the connection falls back to regular unencrypted ftp.

Note: FTPS is supported starting from PHP 4.3.0, if you have compiled in support for OpenSSL.

Wrapper Summary

Attribute	PHP 4	PHP 5
Restricted by allow_url_fopen	Yes	Yes
Allows Reading	Yes	Yes
Allows Writing	Yes (new files only)	Yes (new files/existing files with overwrite )
Allows Appending	No	Yes
Allows Simultaneous Reading and Writing	No	No
Supports stat()	No	As of PHP 5.0.0: filesize(), filetype(), file_exists(), is_file(), and is_dir() elements only. As of PHP 5.1.0: filemtime().
Supports unlink()	No	Yes
Supports rename()	No	Yes
Supports mkdir()	No	Yes
Supports rmdir()	No	Yes