PHP utilities for low-level file access and byte-level reading.

If this project is useful to you, please consider supporting development via GitHub Sponsors.

tc-lib-file provides safe primitives for opening files, reading bytes, and handling binary-oriented workflows used by higher-level PDF and document libraries.

The package is intentionally small but critical: it centralizes low-level I/O concerns so higher-level libraries can focus on document semantics instead of stream safety and byte handling. This separation improves reliability, testability, and reuse across the broader Tecnick ecosystem.

• Local and URL-backed file reading helpers
• Path-safety checks for local operations
• cURL-based retrieval options for remote resources

• Byte, integer, and structured binary reads
• Helpers used by parser and image/font import stacks
• Error handling via typed exceptions

• PHP 8.2 or later
• Extensions: curl, pcre
• Composer

composer require tecnickcom/tc-lib-file

<?php

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$file = new \Com\Tecnick\File\File();
$fh = $file->fopenLocal(__FILE__, 'rb');
$header = $file->fReadInt($fh);

var_dump($header);

make deps
make help
make qa

make rpm
make deb

For system packages, bootstrap with:

require_once '/usr/share/php/Com/Tecnick/File/autoload.php';

Contributions are welcome. Please review CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, and SECURITY.md.