Strange with function to list countries from txt - php

Question

i have a problem and i can't explain it ,,
first this is my function
function list_countries($id,$name=null,$result=null){
$countries = 'countries.txt';
$selected = '';
echo '<select name="'.$name.'" id="'.$id.'">';
echo '<option disabled>طالب الغد</option>';
if(file_exists($countries)){
if(is_readable($countries)){
$files = file_get_contents($countries);
$files = explode('|',$files);
foreach($files AS $file){
$value = sql_safe($file);
if(strlen($value) < 6){
echo '<option disabled>'.$value.'</option>';
}else{
if($value == $result){
$selected = ' selected="selected" ';
}
echo '<option value="'.$value.'".$selected.'>'.$value.'</option>';
}
}
}else{
echo 'The file is nor readable !';
}
}else{
echo "The file is not exist !";
}
echo '</select>';
}
Now the explain
i have a text file includes a countries names separated with "|"
In this file there is a heading before the countries ,, i mean Like this
U|United Kingdom|United State|UAE etc ..
L|Liberia|Libya etc ..
Now what the function Do is Disabled the Heading , and it's always one character ..
but the strlen function the minimum number that it's give to me is 5 not one .. " This is the first problem
The second one in the $result never equaled the $value and ether i don't know why ??

Answer 1

You need to split twice the file, one for the lines, one for the countries.
Also, since your "country header" is always the first item of each row, you do not need to check using strlen. Just shift out the first item of each row set: that one is the header, the following ones are the countries.
Something like this.
Note that in your code there is a syntax error in the echo that outputs the value, the > symbol is actually outside the quotes.
function list_countries($id,$name=null,$result=null){
$countries = 'countries.txt';
$selected = '';
$text = '<select name="'.$name.'" id="'.$id.'">';
$text .= '<option disabled>ﻁﺎﻠﺑ ﺎﻠﻏﺩ</option>';
if(file_exists($countries)){
if(is_readable($countries)){
$list = file($countries);
foreach($list as $item){
$item = trim($item);
$opts = explode('|', $item);
// The first item is the header.
$text .= "<option disabled>$opts[0]</option>";
array_shift($opts);
foreach($opts as $opt)
{
$value = sql_safe($opt);
$text .= '<option';
if($value == $result)
$text .= ' selected="selected"';
$text .= ' value="'.$value.'"';
$text .= '>'.$value."</option>\n";
}
}
}else{
$text .= "The file is not readable!";
}
}else{
$text .= "The file does not exist!";
}
$text .= '</select>';
return $text;
}
I have slightly modified your code so that the function actually returns the text to be output instead of echoing it; this makes for more reusability. To make the above function behave as yours did, just replace the return with
echo $text;
}
and you're good.