parse php file and get dates - php

Question

I am trying to parse a csv file in php to try and figure out how to get all data between some dates and the sort according to the date in ascending order but I am not able to sort the date column or I have no idea what format it is in please help
ID Reg Date FirstName LastName
1 1278336015 Sergio Roberto
2 1395656121 Ray Wilkins
3 1300276526 Trueman Ted
4 1374087492 Volt John
Please assist thanks

Answer 1

Okay, just for fun.
1. Parse the Data:
You could load the CSV data into an associative array like this (admittedly not very sophisticated, no error checking, validation etc):
$file = file_get_contents('CSV.csv'); // load csv into string
$rows = explode(PHP_EOL, $file); // break each line into array
$data = Array(); // where we'll store the data
foreach ($rows as $i => $row) {
$fields = explode(',', $row); // break each field into array
foreach ($fields as $col => $val) {
if ($i == 0) {
$names[] = $val; // headers in first row
} else {
$colName = $names[$col];
if ($colName == 'Reg Date') $val = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $val);
$data[$i - 1][$colName] = $val;
}
}
}
So with your sample data above, you get:
array(4) {
[0]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "1"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2010-07-05 06:20:15"
["FirstName"]=>
string(6) "Sergio"
["LastName"]=>
string(7) "Roberto"
}
[1]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "2"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2014-03-24 03:15:21"
["FirstName"]=>
string(3) "Ray"
["LastName"]=>
string(7) "Wilkins"
}
[2]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "3"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2011-03-16 04:55:26"
["FirstName"]=>
string(7) "Trueman"
["LastName"]=>
string(3) "Ted"
}
[3]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "4"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2013-07-17 11:58:12"
["FirstName"]=>
string(4) "Volt"
["LastName"]=>
string(4) "John"
}
}
2. Sort the Data:
You can use usort() to sort by the timestamp column.
usort($data, function ($a, $b) {
if ($a['Reg Date'] == $b['Reg Date']) return 0;
return ($a['Reg Date'] < $b['Reg Date']) ? -1 : 1;
});
Results:
===After Sorting:===
array(4) {
[0]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "1"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2010-07-05 06:20:15"
["FirstName"]=>
string(6) "Sergio"
["LastName"]=>
string(7) "Roberto"
}
[1]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "3"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2011-03-16 04:55:26"
["FirstName"]=>
string(7) "Trueman"
["LastName"]=>
string(3) "Ted"
}
[2]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "4"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2013-07-17 11:58:12"
["FirstName"]=>
string(4) "Volt"
["LastName"]=>
string(4) "John"
}
[3]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "2"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2014-03-24 03:15:21"
["FirstName"]=>
string(3) "Ray"
["LastName"]=>
string(7) "Wilkins"
}
}
3. Filter the Data:
And you can use array_filter to filter the results down. I created a class to handle this (as described by #jensgram answer here)
$from = '2011-01-01';
$to = '2013-12-31';
$filtered = array_filter($data, Array(new compareDates($from, $to), 'isInRange'));
Results:
===After Filtering [2011-01-01 - 2013-12-31]:===
array(2) {
[1]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "3"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2011-03-16 04:55:26"
["FirstName"]=>
string(7) "Trueman"
["LastName"]=>
string(3) "Ted"
}
[2]=>
array(4) {
["ID"]=>
string(1) "4"
["Reg Date"]=>
string(19) "2013-07-17 11:58:12"
["FirstName"]=>
string(4) "Volt"
["LastName"]=>
string(4) "John"
}
}
Here's the simple class I used:
class compareDates
{
function __construct($from, $to)
{
$this->from = $from;
$this->to = $to;
}
function isInRange($ele)
{
if ($ele['Reg Date'] >= $this->from && $ele['Reg Date'] <= $this->to) {
return TRUE;
}
return FALSE;
}
}
NOTE: for the purpose of being able to see the date/time, I stored as
a string. But you would normally just use the numeric value to sort
by. I mention this to say that if you change the format of the date
string, it could break the sorting.