Format string using php to insert into mysql db - php

Question

I have the following string:
$result = "category,date,product,cost
car,10/10/2005,toyota,3000
bike,12/12/2007,yamaha,1000";
I need to arrange the string into the best format to insert into a database (needs to be efficient as there might be lots of data also first row will not be needed).
The string is on new lines, so I can:
$n = explode("\n", $result);
which puts it in this format:
[0] => category,date,product,cost
[1] => car,10/10/2005,toyota,3000
[2] => bike,12/12/2007,yamaha,1000
now how would i go about formatting this to insert in a db, once again the solution needs to be efficient (for performance), also I would like the first row to not be inserted and finally on the insert I wish for the date to not be inserted.
Hope it makes sense, thanks for the help in advance.
--------edit---------------
The table (item) is structured with the following fields:
category, product, cost
thanks

Answer 1

If you are going to have a similar string with the same columns every time, then you could do something like this:
$n = explode("\n", $result);
// skip the first row since it's just column names
for ($i = 1; $i <= count($n); $i++)
{
$cat = $n[$i][[0]; // category
$date = $n[$i][[1]; // date
$prod = $n[$i][[2]; // product
$cost = $n[$i][[3]; // cost
// and you can put it into a query like so
$sql = "insert into myTable ('category', 'date', 'product', 'cost') values ('$cat', '$date', '$prod', '$cost')";
}
Does this answer your question?

Answer 2

Improving from previously answered post:
$n = explode("\n", $result);
// skip the first row since it's just column names
$sql = "insert into myTable ('category', 'date', 'product', 'cost') values ";
for ($i = 1; $i <= count($n); $i++)
{
$cat = $n[$i][[0]; // category
$date = $n[$i][[1]; // date
$prod = $n[$i][[2]; // product
$cost = $n[$i][[3]; // cost
$sql .= "('$cat', '$date', '$prod', '$cost'),";
}
$sql = trim($sql, ",");
if(count($n) != 0)
mysql_query($sql)
This gives you just one single query which will insert multiple rows.