Writing a Database Query to a file - php

Question

I am trying to write a Database Query to a file, But am just wondering how I get the SQL Data to be input into the file.
It is currently outputting nothing to the .txt file at all. I suspect its something to do with the while loop and am questioning whether it needs to be there or not.
My code is :
function backup_tables($host,$user,$pass,$name,$tables = '*')
{
$link = mysql_connect($host,$user,$pass);
mysql_select_db($name,$link);
$query = "SELECT gamename, username, MAX(thescore)
FROM game_scores
GROUP BY gamename, username
ORDER BY gamename, thescore DESC";
$result = mysql_query($query);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$scoredata = $row;
}
//save file
$handle = fopen('scores/games-backup'.'.txt','w+');
fwrite($handle,$scoredate);
fclose($handle);
echo "Success";
}
Any help on writing the SQL Results to this text file would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

$row is an array, you will need to make it a string before you can write it to a file, you can use implode().
$scoredata is also being overwritten in each loop, maybe use $scoredata[] instead
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$scoredata[] = implode("; ", $row);
}
This will make $scoredata an array also, so you will need to convert that to a string too!
$handle = fopen('scores/games-backup'.'.txt','w+');
fwrite($handle,implode("\r\n", $scoredata));
fclose($handle);
This should print each database row on a new line in the file.
EDIT: This will just be a text file, formatted as text, not that great for a backup file. You will need to structure the text into an SQL format to make it useful..

Answer 2

Try something like :
$handle = fopen('scores/games-backup'.'.txt','w+');
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
fputs($handle, join(';', $row)."\n");
}
fclose($handle);
$row is an array, you must join it (or access the elements )

Answer 3

$row is not a string, you have to make it a string before you can put it into a file.
And you have to change $scoredata to $scoredata[] because, it is now being overwritten continiously.

Answer 4

You can use print_r function with second parameter set true.
$str = print_r($row, true);
fwrite($handle,implode("\r\n", $str));
Or you can serialize the array
$str = serialize($row);
fwrite($handle,implode("\r\n", $str));