Flat file databases

[beanwebb]

Could anyone tell me, point me to a web site, that shows how to use flat file databases, is this possible in php?

[james_holden]

It's very possible - you can use the classic berkely style flat database or perhaps the CSV example.

You need to write a set of routines which for a CSV file can read, write and edit records.

CSV is comma seperated so we could do something like this:

// Read from db
function read_csv_datafile( $datafile ){
return file( $datafile );
}

// Append to database
function insert_csv_record( $field1,$field2,$field3, $datafile ){
$row = $field1.",".$field2.",".$field3."\n";
if (!$fp = @fopen($datafile,"a")){
echo "Unable to open data source";
} else {
fputs($fp,$row);
fclose($fp);
}
}

etc etc

[mrsocks]

how many records can you effieciently store in a flat file database?

i would imagine the answer is "as many as you want" but how many without a noticable performance hit?

thanks

[superwormy]

That depends on hundreds of things... the server hardware, the load on the server, the format you store the text in, the efficiency of your scripts, what data you're storing... etc.

There is ALWAYS a perfomance hit with more records, even when using a nice fast SQL database. Sometimes the only way to find out how much of one is to try it out :-)