php read product data txt file - php

Question

I have a .txt file with product data, which I want to read in php. Each line contains one product, and the product details (number, name and price) are separated by tabs. As you can see below, it is not always true that the prices are nicely aligned vertically, because of the difference in length for the prodcut names. The data look like this:
ABC001 an item description $5.50
XYZ999 an other item $6
PPP000 yet another one $8.99
AKA010 one w a longer name $3.33
J_B007 a very long name, to show tabs $99
(I didn't know how to show the tabs, so they are spaces in the example above, but in the real file, it are real tabs)
What is the most efficient way to do this? (by the way, it is a remote file) I would love to have an array containing the product data per product:
$product['number'], $product['name'] and $product['price']
Thanks very much!

Answer 1

You could read the file line by line (using the function file, for instance, that will get you each line into one line of an array).
And, then, use explode on each of those lines, to separate the fields :
$data_of_line = explode("\t", $string_line);
Using "\t" (tabulation") as a separator.
You'd then have $data_of_line[0] containing the number, $data_of_line[1] the name, and $data_of_line[2] the price.

Answer 2

1) Easiest way is using file() to load all the lines into an array (unless the file is really big, then i would consider another approach).
2) split each line by tab ("\t" character)
3) "format" the array columns as you wish.
Sample snippet:
$productsArray = file($productsFileName, FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES);
foreach ($productsArray as $key => &$product) {
$arr = explode("\t", $product);
$product = array('number' => $arr[0], 'name' => $arr[1], 'price' => $arr[2]);
}
var_dump($productsArray);

Answer 3

fgetcsv() is a good function
check out the example from
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php, here's a slightly modified version:
$products = array();
$handle = fopen("products.txt", "r");
while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, "\t")) !== FALSE) {
$products[] = array(
'number' => $data[0],
'name' => $data[1],
'price' => $data[2]
);
}
fclose($handle);

Answer 4

$fileArr = file('path.to.your.file.txt');
$productsData = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < count($fileArr); $i++) {
$lineData = preg_match('/^(\w{3}\d{3})\s+(.*)\s+\$(\d+(\.\d+))$/', $fileArr[$i], $matches);
$productsData[] = array(
'number' => $matches[1],
'name' => $matches[2],
'price' => $matches[3]
);
}
This will be slower the using explode but it can also parse files that have more then just one tab as a separator between values. Plus you won't have to strip $ sign from the prices. If you wan't to keep $ sign with the price you should use this regex instead:
'/^(\w{3}\d{3})\s+(.*)\s+(\$\d+(\.\d+))$/'