A context is a set of parameters and wrapper specific options which modify or enhance the behavior of a stream. Contexts are created using stream_context_create() and can be passed to most filesystem related stream creation functions (i.e. fopen(), file(), file_get_contents(), etc...).
Options can be specified when calling stream_context_create(), or later using stream_context_set_option(). A list of wrapper specific options can be found in the Context options and parameters chapter.
Parameters can be specified for contexts using the stream_context_set_params() function.