PHP Manual: Gets last access time of file

Description

intfalse fileatime(string $filename)

Gets the last access time of the given file.

Parameters

filename: Path to the file.

Return Values

Returns the time the file was last accessed, or false on failure. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp.

Errors/Exceptions

Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.

Examples

Example #1 fileatime example

<?php

// outputs e.g.  somefile.txt was last accessed: December 29 2002 22:16:23.

$filename = 'somefile.txt';
if (file_exists($filename)) {
    echo "$filename was last accessed: " . date("F d Y H:i:s.", fileatime($filename));
}

?>

Notes

Note:
The atime of a file is supposed to change whenever the data blocks of a file are being read. This can be costly performance-wise when an application regularly accesses a very large number of files or directories.

Some Unix filesystems can be mounted with atime updates disabled to increase the performance of such applications; USENET news spools are a common example. On such filesystems this function will be useless.

Note:
Note that time resolution may differ from one file system to another.

Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache for more details.

Tip

As of PHP 5.0.0, this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to Supported Protocols and Wrappers to determine which wrappers support stat family of functionality.