README.md
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# PHP Tail Library
A PHP Library for tailing files, supporting PHP 7.0 and above.
Currently, this library allows you to get the tail of a given file. Subsequent calls to the ````getTail```` function
will return whatever has been appended since the last call.
## Usage
Firstly let's create some random file with 3 lines of text.
```php
$fileLocation = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'tailTest');
file_put_contents($fileLocation, "Hello 1" . PHP_EOL . "Hello 2" . PHP_EOL . "Hello 3" . PHP_EOL);
```
Now we can instantiate the Tail Config class and inject it into the constructor of the Tail operator, then run the
````getTail```` function:
```php
$config = new \IcyApril\Tail\Config($fileLocation);
$config->setLines(2);
$tail = new \IcyApril\Tail\Tail($config);
echo $tail->getTail();
```
The output of this will be the final two lines of the file we created:
````
Hello 2
Hello 3
````
Suppose we then append a line to the file:
```php
file_put_contents($fileLocation, "Hello 4" . PHP_EOL, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX);
```
Running ````getTail```` again will yield ````Hello 4````:
```php
echo $tail->getTail();
// Hello 4
```
## When to run getTail?
You can decide when to call the ````getTail```` function by either using the ````inotify```` watcher or simply using
polling with the ````filemtime()```` function.
## Caveats
* The output is based on line count. If your file has 15 lines to start with, then has 17; the last 2 will be displayed
at the next ````getTail```` call.
* If a file is over-written and therefore has less than the amount of lines than it started with; the entire new file
will be returned at the next ````getTail```` call.
* Obviously you need to have your own polling/monitoring to decide when to call ````getTail````