PHP - Pulling array and splitting the strings - php

Question

Not sure how to title this properly but here's the issue I am running into currently. I built a cart and checkout system and it loads all the data into a database when it finalized the order. To save some space, I stored just the item IDs originally but then I ran into the issue of if I deleted the item from the database (because it was discontinued or whatever) then it wouldn't return the info I needed. And if they ordered more then 1 item the database record would be wrong. So I stored the data like so:
Itemid:Quantity:Price:name, itemid2:quantity2:price2:name2
OR
1:3:20.00:Flower Hat, 2:1:17.75:diamonds
The issue I have right now that I need help with is this. I need to seperate the four values into variables like $price, $item, $id, $ammount so I can display them on the order history page and I need to loop through all items on the array so I can print a row for each item with all four fields respective to that item.
I use strpos already to get the shipping info from the same database field which is formatted as METHOD:Price but since I have 3 :'s on my string I'm not sure how to go through each one. Thanks.

Answer 1

Here's a function
function parseItems($dbjunk){
$cart = array();
$items = explode(",",$dbjunk);
foreach($items as $i){
$chunks = explode(":", $i);
$cart[] = array(
"ItemID" => $chunks[0] ,
"Quantity" => $chunks[1] ,
"Price" => $chunks[2] ,
"name" => $chunks[3]
);
}
return $cart;
}
Example usage:
$dbjunk = "Itemid:Quantity:Price:name, itemid2:quantity2:price2:name2";
$parsed = parseItems($dbjunk);
print_r($parsed);
See: https://3v4l.org/rBkXF
If you need variables instead of an array you can use list(), like this..
$dbjunk = "Itemid:Quantity:Price:name, itemid2:quantity2:price2:name2";
$parsed = parseItems($dbjunk);
foreach($parsed as $p){
list($itemID, $Quantity, $Price, $name) = array_values($p);
var_dump($itemID, $Quantity, $Price, $name);
}
see: https://3v4l.org/l4vsn

Answer 2

You should not physically delete items from your database. Instead, put a new column named 'is_active' or something like that to indicate whether the product is active/non-deleted.
Answering your question, here is my suggestion:
$orderString = '1:3:20.00:Flower Hat, 2:1:17.75:diamonds';
$items = array();
foreach(explode(', ', $orderString) as $itemString) {
$itemData = explode(':', $itemString);
$items[] = array(
'id' => $itemData[0],
'amount' => $itemData[1],
'value' => $itemData[2],
'description' => $itemData[3]
);
}
with this code, you will obtain an array with the data of all the items in the string, no matter how much items are in the string

Answer 3

try something like
$data = 1:3:20.00:Flower Hat, 2:1:17.75:diamonds
list($price, $item, $uid, $id, $ammount) = explode(":", $data);
echo $user;
echo $item;

Answer 4

Read about First Normal Form. Basically, you want to store one value in one field. So, instead of this:
shipping = "method:price"
You want something like this:
shipping_method = "method"
shipping_price = "price"
Don't concern yourself with space -- it's essentially free nowadays.
Regarding your deleted items dilemma, your initial implementation was the way to go:
I stored just the item IDs originally
In addition to reverting to this technique, I would recommend two things:
Add a boolean field to your item table to represent if the item is currently available or not. This gives you the additional feature of being able to toggle items on/off without having to delete/insert records and change ids.
Before deleting an item, check to see if it's ever been ordered. If not, it's ok to delete. If so, instead just deactivate it.