Reading Flat Files

cap97

I'm following this tutorial:

www.developer.com/lang/article.php/1146721

I've been able to write to a file called "file.txt". Now I'm trying to read from it following the above instructions and I can only get 1 out of 3 things to work. Not sure if it's the tutorial's problem or mine. Here's what I have.

<?php
 if (!is_readable("file.txt")) {
  echo "This file is not readable!";
  exit;
 }

 $array = file("file.txt");

 foreach ($array as $row) { 
  $line = explode($row,"|");
  echo "Name: $line[0], Email: $line[1]<p>";
 }

 echo count($array) . "<p>";

 if (in_array("John Doe",$array)) {
  echo "The name John Doe is in this file<p>";
 } else {
  echo "He ain't here!<p>";
 }
?>

And here's what I get:

Name: |, Email: 

1

He ain't here!

and here's what "file.txt" looks like:

John Doe|blah@blah.com

I know the file's permissions are set right or I'd be getting an error message. I know it's readable or it wouldn't get past that first bit of code. I find it odd that 1 out of the 3 (the count part) is working. Not very consistent. Also the fact that it's printing an "|" in the first part has me suspicious since I'm not telling it to print that, so maybe I'm doing the "explode" function wrong.

TheDefender

Change to:
$line = explode("|", $row);

cap97

Cool! 2 out of 3 work now. The "in_array" bit is the only stubborn one. I'm thinking "$array = file("file.txt");" isn't turning the file into the format "in_array" is looking for. When I type something before "in_array" like:

 $array = array("John Doe","Mae","Homer");

it works just fine. Hmmmmm.

TheDefender

$array = file("file.txt");

 foreach ($array as $row) {
  $line = explode("|",$row);
  echo "Name: $line[0], Email: $line[1]<p>";
 }

 echo count($array) . "<p>";

 if (in_array("John Doe", $line)) {
  echo "The name John Doe is in this file<p>";
 } else {
  echo "He ain't here!<p>";
 }

The array you actually want is inside of the $line array and not the $array array. Remember, the $array array has the name and pipe and an email address. In your count of the array it says 1. 1 Row, get it? So, even though John Doe is in the array, it isn't parse as a separate component within the array. BUT, in the $line array (where you explode the $row of the FOREACH, the value of John Doe exists in the $line[0] component within the array.

So change your in_array() call to the $line array instead, and it will work. Of course, this won't work if your file has more than one row, unless each row had the name John Doe as the name.

To make it work for multiple rows, you need to move the third part into the FOREACH Loop, and call the compare to a variable containing the name, instead of hard-coding the name into your in_array() function.

Weedpacket

Don't forget to [man]trim[/man] the line before you explode it: [man]file[/man] keeps the end-of-line character(s) from the file. Otherwise you'll have a hard time later when it comes to finding email addresses.