Quote of the day script - using flat text-files.

[jek]

Hi there!

I have recently begun recoding a site from using ssi and cgi to using php, and I have stumbled over a little problem.

I have a cgi-script that prints a 'Quote of the day', which the script reads from several textfiles.

The files are named to a separate month (jan.txt, feb.txt, ...) and each file has one quote for each day that month.

The files look like this:

YYYYMMDD!!Quote\n

Example:
19530101!!Concrete was invented by Reuben Smith.
19530102!!The seven day war ended in Finland.

So what I want is a small php script that opens the correct file (the current month) and then echos the quote for the actual day and the year that it happened...

Thanks in advance / jek

[jek]

To simplify the script I could change the textfiles to use the following format:

DD!!1951 - Quote.\n

So I just need a script that prints out the line that starts with todays 'day of the month'...

Thanks in advance / jek

[diego25]

Check out these functions:
date
file (or fopen)
explode
Those are probably the only ones you need for such a script...

Diego

[batman]

Hello,

Why don't you just determine the date, then just echo a little message according to that date. You will have to be able to get the current date. Do something like this.

$today = getdate(); 
$month = $today['month'];

if($month == 'January')
{
echo "This is the message for January!";
}
if($month == 'February')
{
echo "This is the message for February!";
}
if($month == 'March')
{
echo "This is the message for March!";
}

You can also display different messages according to what day also.

-Blake

[jek]

Thanks diego25 and batman!

I'll try to make use of your suggestions.

/ jek

[dalecosp]

I've got this set up in a church's web site...sounds exactly the same (although the quotes, of course, are from the Bible)...if you wanna see it, holler back....

[jek]

That would be great dalecosp!

Perhaps it can save me the hassle of writing my own script.

Thanks a lot / jek

[dalecosp]

I'll let you clean it up. It could probably use error suppression, for one thing. Post with any questions...

<?php

function VerseOfDay() {
        $Day = date (j);
        $Month = date (F);
        $Year = date (Y);
        $File = "../webdata/verse-month/$Year/$Month.txt";
        $Open = fopen ($File, "r");
                if ($Open) {
                        $Verse = file ($File);
                                for ($n=0; $n <= count($Verse); $n++) {
                                        $GetLine = explode("\n", $Verse[$n]);
                                        } # end of for statement

                    fclose ($Open);
            }  # end of if statement

            else {
                    print ("unable to read from file");

            }  # end of else statement

      $Day--;

    print ("<strong><font color=\"0000FF\">Verse of the Day:&nbsp;<align=\"center\">");
print ("<font color=\"000000\"><em>$Verse[$Day]</em></strong>");

} # end of function VerseOfDay !!!!

?>

[dalecosp]

Oh, BTW, my datafiles have nothing in them but the verse; the February file has 28 lines, the March one 31, et c.

If you wanna display other info, you'll have to tweak a bit...

[jek]

Great! Thank you very much dalecosp! It works exactly as I want it to. Great work!

I'm happy with the replys (and the excellent solution provided by dalescorp), so there's no need for further posts in this thread.

/ jek

[snosluoc]

Hi dalecosp, I am new to this forum and new to php, this script is exactly what I am looking for. But I cannot get it to work? The script displays nothing in the browser. If I put a random print command before the function it works and after the function it works but nothing is coming out of the function. I changed “$File = "$Month.txt"; and put the February.txt file in the same dir just to make sure my error was not there. Still nothing, like I said I am really really new to php, hope I am not doing something too stupid! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[dalecosp]

Hi, and welcome to PHPBuilder. 🙂

Please show your version of the function in code, and the code in which you call the function. Someone might be able to help you then.