i thinks the new lines are always appended at the end, thats why its called 'append'. 
when you READ the lines you probably fill an array with the values from the textfile. maybe its easiest to reverse this array, before using the values for output.
the last will be first then. 
aha! I wondered if that were possible, but how would you reverse it, is there a way to do that without adding a field to sort it on? (I assume there must be, since you said...I'm not asking for the code, just a hint as to where one might start - after all, I'm not writing anything that has any similiarity to this, just curious - wjat a run-on parenthetic statement that was, and without coffee! better go get some!)
edit - still ain't went to get my first cup of coffee... but look what I found:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10242205
Well, to be honest, I don't know how that helped me, it was using the number of clicks..
If I were to use date, how would I do that?
If anyone could tell me how to arrange it by the date it was updated, that would be even better.
Also, I really have no clues on arrays, in the PHP book i got from library, I never really read about arrays..
If you want to have the newest message in the file first, then you will need to do something like this.
$intext = get_file_contents(newsa.txt); // get the old stuff
$outtext = $message . $intext; // concatenate old to new
fopen("newsa.txt", "w"); // write out new and old
write($fp, $outtext);
fclose($fp);
this reads a text-file "messages.txt" line by line and displays the contents
1. old messages first
2. latest messages first
<?
// defining the txt-file
$file = "messages.txt";
// open file for reading
$fp = fopen($file, "r");
// read contents to array
$i = 0;
while(!feof($fp)){
// read each line up to 100 characters
$line = fgets($fp, 100);
/* make an array $content which contains the
line 1 as $content[0]
line 2 as $content[1]
line 3 as $content[2] */
$content[$i] = str_replace("\n", "<br>", $line);
$i++;
}
fclose($fp);
/* 1. OLD MESSAGES FIRST:
we have the array $content which contains the
all lines of the txt-file, the oldest line first */
echo "old msgs first:<br />";
for($i=0; $i<sizeof($content);$i++){
echo $content[$i];
}
/* 2. LATEST MESSAGES FIRST:
as you want to echo out the last value first
you just have to reverse the array by using, eh...? guess. */
echo "new msgs first:<br />";
$backward = array_reverse($content);
for($i=0; $i<sizeof($backward);$i++){
echo $backward[$i];
}
?>
$outtext = $message . $intext; // concatenate old to new
For that string of line, will it mess it up if I add the stuff like
topic = stripslashes($topic);
$message = stripslashes($message);
$posted = " Posted By: Balrok";
$curr_news = file("news.txt");
$fontshit = "<font color=\"#666666\" size\"=-2\">";
$message = "<b>" . $fontshit . $topic . $posted . "</b><br>\n" . $message . "<p>\n";
??
I cannot see why it would hurt. If I have
$oldstr = "<br>howdy neighbor!<br>"; //and
$newstr = "<br>should be the top line<br>";
// when they get concatenated you get
$catstr = $newstr . $oldstr;
echo "$catstr";
You should see
should be the top line
howdy neighbor
IOW, if you can write the text in one chunk, there is no reason why you cannot write it in two and stick together.
Here is what I use for my news, feel free to use it or whatever...
$date_format = date("l F j, Y, h:i:s A");
$endline = "\n\n";
$news = "<p align='left'><i>News for:</i><b> " . $date_format . "</b></p>
<p align='left'><b><img src='Bullet1.gif' width='15' height='13'>" . $title . "</b> <font size='2'>[posted by <a href='mailto:" . $email . "'>" . $user . "</a>]</font></p>
" . $news . "
</p>
<p align='center'><i>[Visit our <a href='http://www.t4cbible.com/forum/'>forum</a> to post a comment]</i></p>
<p align='center'>]---[</p>".$endline;
$filename = "news.txt";
$handle = fopen($filename, "r");
$old_content = fread($handle, filesize ($filename));
$handle = null;
$final_content = $news1.$old_content;
$handle2 = fopen($filename, "w");
$finalwrite = fwrite($handle2, $final_content);
$handle2 = null;
}
hey foxhound, it seems that that will work.. but.. do you use MySQL for logging in and stuff ?
No, actually I just use pure PHP. Never really gotten into SQL
been following this thread because I wanted to see the finished product and try to implement it but when I tried, I had problems trying to write it out...here is what I have so far:
<div class="center">
<form action="http://www.atimealone.com/php/news/newstest.php" method="post" />
<table style="text-align:center;border:0;">
<tr><td class="g"><b>Name:</b></td>
<td class="g"><input type="text" name="user" size="40" value="Name" onfocus="if(this.value=='Name')this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='Name';" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="g"><b>Email:</b></td>
<td class="g"><input type="text" name="email" size="40" value="email" onfocus="if(this.value=='email')this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='email';" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="g" valign="top"><b>News:</b></td>
<td class="g"><textarea name="news1" cols="40" rows="2">News Test</textarea></td></tr>
<tr><th colspan="2"><p><input type="submit" value="Add News" /> <input type="reset" value="Clear" /></p></th></tr>
</table>
<?php
if ($_SERVER[REQUEST_METHOD]=="POST")
{
extract($_REQUEST);
$date_format = date("l F j, Y, h:i:s A");
$endline = "\n\n";
$news = "<p class='g'><i>News for:</i> " . $date_format . "</p>
<p class='h'><img src='http://www.atimealone.com/images/BlueDot.gif' width='10' height='10'>" . $title . "</b> [posted by <a href='mailto:" . $email . "'>" . $user . "</a>]</p>
<p class='g'>
" . $news . "
</p>
<p class='center'><----------------></p>".$endline;
$filename = "news.txt";
$handle = fopen($filename, "r");
$old_content = fread($handle, filesize ($filename));
$handle = null;
$final_content = $news1.$old_content;
$handle2 = fopen($filename, "w");
$finalwrite = fwrite($handle2, $final_content);
$handle2 = null;
}
echo $news;
?>
</div>
I'm pretty sure that the line echo $news; is wrong, how should I echo out the file once it's been written to?
Do
include('news.txt');
That will include the whole file, not just the $news.
Thanks! I should have thought of that, but I sure didn't!
Anyway, so far so good, I'm not getting all the fields to write to the text file, but it's looking good:
http://www.atimealone.com/php/news/newstest.php
edit:
aha, I had the wrong field in there a couple places, ok now, and here is the final script (including the input form):
<form action="http://www.atimealone.com/php/news/newstest.php" method="post" />
<table style="text-align:center;border:0;">
<tr><td class="g"><b>Name:</b></td>
<td class="g"><input type="text" name="user" size="40" value="Name" onfocus="if(this.value=='Name')this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='Name';" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="g"><b>Email:</b></td>
<td class="g"><input type="text" name="email" size="40" value="email" onfocus="if(this.value=='email')this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='')this.value='email';" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="g" valign="top"><b>News:</b></td>
<td class="g"><textarea name="news" cols="40" rows="2">News Test</textarea></td></tr>
<tr><th colspan="2"><p><input type="submit" value="Add News" /> <input type="reset" value="Clear" /></p></th></tr>
</table>
<?php
if ($_SERVER[REQUEST_METHOD]=="POST")
{
extract($_REQUEST);
//stripslashes and replace url with link
$news = stripslashes(ereg_replace("[[:alpha:]]+://[^<>[:space:]]+[[:alnum:]/]",
"<a href=\"\\0\">\\0</a>", $news));
$date_format = date("l F j, Y, h:i:s A");
$endline = "\n\n";
$news1 = "<p class='f'><i>News for:</i> " . $date_format . " [posted by <a href='mailto:" . $email . "'>" . $user . "</a>]</p><p class='g'>" . $news . "</p><p class='center'><img src='http://www.atimealone.com/images/line.gif' width='379' height='6' alt='line.gif' /></p>".$endline;
$filename = "news.txt";
$handle = fopen($filename, "r");
$old_content = fread($handle, filesize ($filename));
$handle = null;
$final_content = $news1.$old_content;
$handle2 = fopen($filename, "w");
$finalwrite = fwrite($handle2, $final_content);
$handle2 = null;
}
include("news.txt");
?>