PHP - output text one character at a time - php

Trying to create a old school terminal text effect (one character at a time with a small delay) in PHP - without javascript if possible.
All text written to the screen should go through this function.
I was thinking something like a buffer you can dynamically append text to make sure it would finish one line, before starting on the next.
Not sure how to preceed or if it's even possible without using Javascript.

Inefficient, but to achieve the goal you set (without javascript), you could use PHP's output buffering to achieve a small delay between characters output:
<?php
ob_start();
$buffer = str_repeat(" ", 4096); // fill the buffer
$string = 'Hello World';
$len = strlen($string);
$sleep = 0.5; // sleep half a second between output chars
for($i=0; $i < $len; $i++) {
echo $buffer . $string[$i];
ob_flush();
flush();
usleep($sleep * 1000000);
}

Related

Consuming variable lengths of data from a fixed length buffer in PHP

I have a file that's so large I'm unable to read it into a string in one go, but have to use buffering:
$fp = #fopen("bigfile", 'rb');
while (!feof($fp)) {
//process buffer
}
For simplicity, say the file contains a sequence of integer string pairs, where the integer holds the length of the string. Then the code I want to realise in process buffer, is unpack an int, read that many characters from the buffer, then repeat.
I appreciate any suggestions in dealing with the scenario where the string spans one buffer to the next. I'm sure that this problem must have been solved and that there is a design pattern for it, I just don't know where to start looking.
Any help would be appreciated.
Not sure if you're looking for an extra-clever solution, but straight forward would be:
while (!feof($fp)) {
$len = fread($fp, 2); // integer-2 bytes ...?
// <--- add checks here len($len)==2 and so on...
$len = unpack('S', $len); // pick the correct format character from http://docs.php.net/function.pack
while(!feof($fp) && $len) {
$cbRead = $len < MAX_CHUNK_LEN ? $len : MAX_CHUNK_LEN;
$buf = fread($fp, $cbRead);
// <--- add checks here len($buf)==$cbRead and so on...
$len -= $cbRead;
// ... process buf
}
if ( $len!=0 ) {
errorHandler();
}
else {
processEndOfString();
}
}

“Transfer-Encoding: chunked” header in PHP. What is "padding" for?

As suggested in a reply to a previous question (PHP External Oauth : how to displaying a waiting message while waiting for callback (not using AJAX) ), I am using transfer encoding: chunked to display a waiting message while some tasks are performed. My first attempts failed, and I found a solution in this question “Transfer-Encoding: chunked” header in PHP. There is a "padding" of 1024 blank space. Without this padding it doesn't work. I have googled around but I can't find what this padding is for. Here is the sample code (from the related question).
<?php
header('Content-Encoding', 'chunked');
header('Transfer-Encoding', 'chunked');
header('Content-Type', 'text/html');
header('Connection', 'keep-alive');
ob_flush();
flush();
$p = ""; //padding
for ($i=0; $i < 1024; $i++) {
$p .= " ";
};
echo $p;
ob_flush();
flush();
for ($i = 0; $i < 10000; $i++) {
echo "string";
ob_flush();
flush();
sleep(2);
}
?>
Does anybody have an explanation why it works with and doesn't work without the "padding" ?
The padding is for filling the server buffer, as I understand.
Without it the server will wait until PHP will fill it and after this will flush it - even if in PHP code you do flush().
Related:
PHP Output buffer flush issue on Apache/Linux (May 2010; on Server Fault)
I have no idea what this padding is supposed to do, and actually it shouldn't work (someone may enlighten me if I'm wrong on this). The idea with chunked encoding is that you send your data in chunks. Each chunk consists of a line containing the length of a chunk, followed by a newline and then the data of the chunk. A response can contain as many chunks as you want to have. So basically the response of 3 chunks containing "Hello" would look like this:
5 <--- this is the length of the chunk, that is "Hello" == 5 chars
Hello <--- This is a the actual data
<-- an empty line is between the chunks
5
Hello
5
Hello
<-- send two empty lines to end the transmission
So I'd rewrite this to something like:
<?php
header('Content-Encoding', 'chunked');
header('Transfer-Encoding', 'chunked');
header('Content-Type', 'text/html');
header('Connection', 'keep-alive');
ob_flush();
flush();
for ($i = 0; $i < 10000; $i++) {
$string = "string";
echo strlen($string)."\r\n"; // this is the length
echo $string."\r\n"; // this is the date
echo "\r\n"; // newline between chunks
ob_flush(); // rinse and repeat
flush();
sleep(2);
}
echo "\r\n"; // send final empty line
ob_flush();
flush();
?>
The code above will not work at all circumstances (e.g. with strings containing newlines or non-ascii encodings), so you will have to adapt it to your use case.

How to split content into equal parts then write to file in PHP

I have been reading/testing examples since last night, but the cows never came home.
I have a file with (for example) approx. 1000 characters in one line and want to split it into 10 equal parts then write back to the file.
Goal:
1. Open the file in question and read its content
2. Count up to 100 characters for example, then put a line break
3. Count 100 again and another line break, and so on till it's done.
4. Write/overwrite the file with the new split content
For example:
I want to turn this => KNMT2zSOMs4j4vXsBlb7uCjrGxgXpr
Into this:
KNMT2zSOMs
4j4vXsBlb7
uCjrGxgXpr
This is what I have so far:
<?php
$MyString = fopen('file.txt', "r");
$MyNewString;
$n = 100; // How many you want before seperation
$MyNewString = substr($MyString,0,$n);
$i = $n;
while ($i < strlen($MyString)) {
$MyNewString .= "\n"; // Seperator Character
$MyNewString .= substr($MyString,$i,$n);
$i = $i + $n;
}
file_put_contents($MyString, $MyNewString);
fclose($MyString);
?>
But that is not working quite the way I anticipated.
I realize that there are other similiar questions like mine, but they were not showing how to read a file, then write back to it.
<?php
$str = "aonoeincoieacaonoeincoieacaonoeincoieacaonoeincoieacaonoeincoieacaon";
$pieces = 10;
$ch = chunk_split($str, $pieces);
$piece = explode("\n", $ch);
foreach($piece as $line) {
// write to file
}
?>
http://php.net/manual/en/function.chunk-split.php
Hold on here. You're not giving a file name/path to file_put_contents();, you're giving a file handle.
Try this:
file_put_contents("newFileWithText.txt", $MyNewString);
You see, when doing $var=fopen();, you're giving $var a value of a handle, which is not meant to be used with file_put_contents(); as it doesnt ask for a handle, but a filename instead. So, it should be: file_put_contents("myfilenamehere.txt", "the data i want in my file here...");
Simple.
Take a look at the documentation for str_split. It will take a string and split it into chunks based on length, storing each chunk at a separate index in an array that it returns. You can then iterate over the array adding a line break after each index.

Clear PHP CLI output

I'm trying to get a "live" progress indicator working on my php CLI app. Rather than outputting as
1Done
2Done
3Done
I would rather it cleared and just showed the latest result. system("command \C CLS") doesnt work. Nor does ob_flush(), flush() or anything else that I've found.
I'm running windows 7 64 bit ultimate, I noticed the command line outputs in real time, which was unexpected. Everyone warned me that out wouldn't... but it does... a 64 bit perk?
Cheers for the help!
I want to avoid echoing 24 new lines if I can.
Try outputting a line of text and terminating it with "\r" instead of "\n".
The "\n" character is a line-feed which goes to the next line, but "\r" is just a return that sends the cursor back to position 0 on the same line.
So you can:
echo "1Done\r";
echo "2Done\r";
echo "3Done\r";
etc.
Make sure to output some spaces before the "\r" to clear the previous contents of the line.
[Edit] Optional: Interested in some history & background? Wikipedia has good articles on "\n" (line feed) and "\r" (carriage return)
I came across this while searching for a multi line solution to this problem. This is what I eventually came up with. You can use Ansi Escape commands. http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/ansicode.txt
<?php
function replaceOut($str)
{
$numNewLines = substr_count($str, "\n");
echo chr(27) . "[0G"; // Set cursor to first column
echo $str;
echo chr(27) . "[" . $numNewLines ."A"; // Set cursor up x lines
}
while (true) {
replaceOut("First Ln\nTime: " . time() . "\nThird Ln");
sleep(1);
}
?>
I recently wrote a function that will also keep track of the number of lines it last output, so you can feed it arbitrary string lengths, with newlines, and it will replace the last output with the current one.
With an array of strings:
$lines = array(
'This is a pretty short line',
'This line is slightly longer because it has more characters (i suck at lorem)',
'This line is really long, but I an not going to type, I am just going to hit the keyboard... LJK gkjg gyu g uyguyg G jk GJHG jh gljg ljgLJg lgJLG ljgjlgLK Gljgljgljg lgLKJgkglkg lHGL KgglhG jh',
"This line has newline characters\nAnd because of that\nWill span multiple lines without being too long",
"one\nmore\nwith\nnewlines",
'This line is really long, but I an not going to type, I am just going to hit the keyboard... LJK gkjg gyu g uyguyg G jk GJHG jh gljg ljgLJg lgJLG ljgjlgLK Gljgljgljg lgLKJgkglkg lHGL KgglhG jh',
"This line has newline characters\nAnd because of that\nWill span multiple lines without being too long",
'This is a pretty short line',
);
One can use the following function:
function replaceable_echo($message, $force_clear_lines = NULL) {
static $last_lines = 0;
if(!is_null($force_clear_lines)) {
$last_lines = $force_clear_lines;
}
$term_width = exec('tput cols', $toss, $status);
if($status) {
$term_width = 64; // Arbitrary fall-back term width.
}
$line_count = 0;
foreach(explode("\n", $message) as $line) {
$line_count += count(str_split($line, $term_width));
}
// Erasure MAGIC: Clear as many lines as the last output had.
for($i = 0; $i < $last_lines; $i++) {
// Return to the beginning of the line
echo "\r";
// Erase to the end of the line
echo "\033[K";
// Move cursor Up a line
echo "\033[1A";
// Return to the beginning of the line
echo "\r";
// Erase to the end of the line
echo "\033[K";
// Return to the beginning of the line
echo "\r";
// Can be consolodated into
// echo "\r\033[K\033[1A\r\033[K\r";
}
$last_lines = $line_count;
echo $message."\n";
}
In a loop:
foreach($lines as $line) {
replaceable_echo($line);
sleep(1);
}
And all lines replace each other.
The name of the function could use some work, just whipped it up, but the idea is sound. Feed it an (int) as the second param and it will replace that many lines above instead. This would be useful if you were printing after other output, and you didn't want to replace the wrong number of lines (or any, give it 0).
Dunno, seemed like a good solution to me.
I make sure to echo the ending newline so that it allows the user to still use echo/print_r without killing the line (use the override to not delete such outputs), and the command prompt will come back in the correct place.
i know the question isn't strictly about how to clear a SINGLE LINE in PHP, but this is the top google result for "clear line cli php", so here is how to clear a single line:
function clearLine()
{
echo "\033[2K\r";
}
function clearTerminal () {
DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR === '\\' ? popen('cls', 'w') : exec('clear');
}
Tested on Win 7 PHP 7. Solution for Linux should work, according to other users reports.
something like this :
for ($i = 0; $i <= 100; $i++) {
echo "Loading... {$i}%\r";
usleep(10000);
}
Use this command for clear cli:
echo chr(27).chr(91).'H'.chr(27).chr(91).'J'; //^[H^[J
Console functions are platform dependent and as such PHP has no built-in functions to deal with this. system and other similar functions won't work in this case because PHP captures the output of these programs and prints/returns them. What PHP prints goes to standard output and not directly to the console, so "printing" the output of cls won't work.
<?php
error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE);
function bufferout($newline, $buffer=null){
$count = strlen(rtrim($buffer));
$buffer = $newline;
if(($whilespace = $count-strlen($buffer))>=1){
$buffer .= str_repeat(" ", $whilespace);
}
return $buffer."\r";
};
$start = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789";
$i = strlen($start);
while ($i >= 0){
$new = substr($start, 0, $i);
if($old){
echo $old = bufferout($new, $old);
}else{
echo $old = bufferout($new);
}
sleep(1);
$i--;
}
?>
A simple implementation of #dkamins answer. It works well. It's a bit- hack-ish. But does the job. Wont work across multiple lines.
function (int $count = 1) {
foreach (range(1,$count) as $value){
echo "\r\x1b[K"; // remove this line
echo "\033[1A\033[K"; // cursor back
}
}
See the full example here
Unfortunately, PHP 8.0.2 does not has a function to do it. However, if you just want to clear console try this: print("\033[2J\033[;H"); or use : proc_open('cls', 'w');
It works in php 8.0.2 and windows 10. It is the same that system('cls') using c language programing.
Tried some of solutions from answers:
<?php
...
$messages = [
'11111',
'2222',
'333',
'44',
'5',
];
$endlines = [
"\r",
"\033[2K\r",
"\r\033[K\033[1A\r\033[K\r",
chr(27).chr(91).'H'.chr(27).chr(91).'J',
];
foreach ($endlines as $i=>$end) {
foreach ($messages as $msg) {
output()->write("$i. ");
output()->write($msg);
sleep(1);
output()->write($end);
}
}
And \033[2K\r seems like works correct.

What is it about PHP's fgets() that makes it so horrible on large files?

What is it about fgets() implementation that makes it so horrible on large files vs fread?
To demonstrate, run this code:
<?php
$line = str_repeat('HelloWorld', 100000) . "\n";
for($i=0; $i<10000; ++$i)
file_put_contents('myfile', $line, FILE_APPEND);
//now we have roughly a 1gig file
// We'll even let fread go first incase
// the subsequent test would have any caching benefits
$fp = fopen('myfile2','r');
$start = microtime(true);
while (fread($fp,4096));
$end = microtime(true);
print ($end-$start) . " using fread\n";
fseek($fp, 0);
$start = microtime(true);
while (fgets($fp));
$end = microtime(true);
print ($end-$start) . " using fgets\n";
?>
It might have something to do with how you're calling fgets. From the manual, it says that if you leave the second parameter out, then:
If no length is specified, it will keep reading from the stream until it reaches the end of the line.
If the data your working with has some very long lines (eg: "HelloWorld" 100,000 times = 1,000,000 characters), then it has to read that whole thing.
Again, from the manual:
If the majority of the lines in the file are all larger than 8KB, it is more resource efficient for your script to specify the maximum line length.

Categories