In a new post today, Elizabeth Smith takes a look at one of the lesser used (well, overall) features that PHP has to offer these days - PHP user streams.

PHP user streams are amazing - they're powerful, fun, and make things like a templating system with filters and multiple back ends quick and easy.

Here's a little "test script" that shows you how to implement contexts for your streams. What are contexts? They're resources that hold additional information. Built in php streams, such as the ftp streams, already have contexts you can set. But they're also great to use in your own user land streams.

In the test script, she shows how to open a stream to a few different resources (including passing parameters and user information), grabbing the contents of each.