I apologize if this question has a no brainer answer. I am still learning more ins and outs of php.
I have a snippet of code that is taking in a CSV file. This CSV file is uploaded by a user who downloads it from an external source. In the CSV file, the person's first name and last name is not split in separate columns. Therefore, in PHP the following is used:
$member_name = explode( " ", $application_data[5]);
The problem is that when this data is then used to render a PDF document to send a letter to the member, it cuts off their last name if their last name is two words.
The information is loaded into the PDF document with the first name and last name field by using:
$member_name[0],
$member_name[1]
Can I safely do:
$member_name[0],
$member_name[1] + $member_name[2]
Even if 99% of the members do not have a space in the last name? Will I get an error that member_name[2] doesn't exist 99% of the time this is done?
I've done some searching on array_merge. Is that a better option? I've been trying to search for how php handles when you add something that doesn't exist and I'm drawing a blank.
I don't want to assume my solution will work and then when the person uploads their CSV file tomorrow, they get an error.
Or maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way and before it attempts to render a pdf document, I should do an if statement that figures out if $member_name[2] exists.
Thank you!
You can use the limit parameter of explode to only split at the first space.
$member_name = explode( " ", $application_data[5], 2);
Of course, if the first name also has more than one word, this still won't be quite right. Names are tricky.
Regarding array_merge, I don't think it would really be useful in this situation.
You could just use a limiter on your explode to only seperate on the first space. Here is an example.
$name = "George The King";
print_r(explode(' ', $name, 2)); //prints -> Array ( [0] => George [1] => The King )
I am trying to re-activate my php knowledge for the following task:
I have a larger textfile containing unsorted lines of comma separated informations, each value enclosed by a '"'.
Each line can be understood as a single dataset, the first value of the line tells me in which table the row belongs.
Now I need to read the file, sort the lines (so that the lines belonging to the same table are together), detect the different blocks and save them in seperate text files. After that, I can do a fast import into a mysql database using load data from infile..
So, I can open the file and sort the lines via this:
<?php
$lines = file("importfile_unsorted.txt");
natsort($lines);
file_put_contents("importfile_sorted.txt", implode($lines));
?>
This works. But now I get stucked. importfile_sorted.txt looks like this:
"AV1","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0:0","0:0","0:0"
"AV2","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0","0:0","0:0","0:0"
.... [this would be the first block, all these lines should be saved in "av.txt"
In the next line the new block "F" begins with several lines:
"F1","D","D","Deutsch",,,"0","W"
"F4","E","E","Englisch",,,"0","W"
"F7","K","K","Kath.Religionslehre",,,"0","W"
"F8","Ev","Ev","Evang.Religionslehre",,,"0","W"
"F9","Eth","Eth","Ethik",,,"0","W"
... [save all these lines beginning with Fxx into file f.txt and go to the next blocks]
"G1","PhL","PÜG"
"G2","ChL","ChÜ"
..
"K1","5a","5a",,"304","Ma","Wei","0","16","16","5",,,,,"1","1","0",,"0","0","0","0"
"K2","5b","5b",,"303","Wo","Hm","0","32","16","5",,,,,"1","1","0",,"0","0","0","0"
"K3","5c","5c",,"302","Gr","Ro","0","32","16","5",,,,,"1","1","0",,"0","0","0","0"
... and so on. Later, there are blocks with a fixed first column like this:
"PL","Di 1","Ba","Q12","Inf1","CoR1"
"PL","Di 1","Bb","Q12","F","Ü2"
"PL","Di 1","Eg","Q12","L","M23"
...
and
"PLS","Di 1","Am"," frei "
"PLS","Di 1","Bad"," ----"
"PLS","Di 1","Bk"," frei "
...
followed by several other blocks (L1... L97, M, R1... R40, U1... U560).
I know all possible "identifiers" (AVx, Fx, Gx, .. PL, PLS..) of the blocks, but it is also possible that a block is omitted and the input file does not a single line of it at all.
The input file contains about 4000 lines all together, so performance should not be too low (although it's not time-critical, the import is done maybe 10 times a year..).
So, is there a way of getting this done in a "smart" and fast way or should I read the input file line by line, detect and remember the first value, add the current line to a result string and loop until a new first value occurs?
Thanks for your help!
Heiko
Use the built in CSV parser, don't split this manually
http://php.net/manual/en/function.str-getcsv.php
I have a php file that has an array in it. I'd like to be able to add an item to that array using a simple form.
Here is an example similar to my array:
$list = array("BA0UKSF","BA9IHHE","BAC8GMB","BAC8HMC","BAC8HMC","BAC8HMC","BACI60T","BAEIDFD","BAEIEFE","BAEIEFE","BAMB0","BAOUKSE","BAOUKSF","BAPQADL","BAPQADM","BUNDLE","CN3ICDC","CN3ICDCA","CN7IZDPA","CN8ID42","CN8ID72","CNECBCBA");
I'd like to add the new item to the array someplace either at the beginning or end of the array list.
I know how to pass the forms data to php but what I dont know is how to get php to open this file, locate the array and add something to it.
I'd just store your array data in JSON format what makes it very easy to operate on the array.
Reading array:
$list = json_decode(file_get_contents($file));
Saving array:
file_put_contents($file, json_encode($list));
Reasons:
It is very bad practice to patch PHP code. (difficult to maintain; will possibly stop to work as you change the code in the file etc.)
If your input you add to $list is user-input and not 100% validated, it may be malicious code in it...
You can parse the text file line by line and locate the array first. And then, you can simply use:
array_push() -- if you want to add elements to the end of the array
array_unshift() - if you want to add elements to the beginning of the array
Examples:
array_push($list, "CN7IZDPA"); //adding to the end
array_unshift($list, "CN7IZDPA"); //adding to the beginning
But reading your array definition from a text file seems like a bad idea. You really should use a database as it makes managing the stuff easier.
Hope this helps!
I am trying to make a news feed type thing in php.
I have a text file - news.txt and a php file index.php.
I have done the surrounding code and opening/closing the text file. Now I am stuck how to insert the new news item $newsnew to the top of the news.txt file and how to delete the old bottom news file in the news.txt file.
Is there any way to do this without deleting the whole file and writing it all again?
EDIT: Each news item is just a small string, say 500 characters, a single line.
Use a database.
If you really must use text files, use a different file for every news-item and name them sequentially like:
news001.txt
news002.txt
etc.
Then you can just add and delete files, read the directory and display what´s there.
Use the file() function to import the items in news.txt as an array, and use array_unshift() to add the new first item, and array_pop() to remove the last item. Join the array back into a single string and write it to news.txt:
$items = file('news.txt');
array_unshift($items, 'New item 1');
array_pop($items);
$newstext = implode(PHP_EOL, $items);
// write $newstext to the external file
If this is a XML file you could read it, parse it and delete the last child in the DOM. But if you have all your data in a DB it could be much easier to rewrite the file every time.
EDIT: after your edit: yes, you can do it like this:
write your new line to a new file
read the old file line by line and write it to the new one
skip the last line (detected by counting or EOF)
delete the old file and rename the new
No, there is not. But you might consider storing the messages in revers order. That way you only need to append to news.txt when new news arrive.
You are not going to be able to prepend to the beginning of the file without writing the whole thing out again. You could append to the end of it with the "a" mode flag to fopen(), but still to delete the oldest item you'll need to write out the entire file again.
Really, a database is solution here instead of a single text file.
There are many ways you can do it using the flat text file, but I'm not really sure it it's worth it. You can use some lightweight structured file or embedded database. For example SQLite, which would store it in normal file, no additional setup needed.