[Resolved] Inserting at beginning of text file... How?

Verd

Hi everyone. I'm new to these forums so please go easy on me. I've been doing PHP all day so I think I have a good amount of understanding about it... anyway, I'm trying to make a news-posting system and it's all working fine and dandy except one thing (I'll get to it). Here's the system:
http://wi.verdagon.com/post.php

You enter a 10-character string for the date (like 99-99-9999) and whatever you want for the rest, and it perfectly inserts that news post into http://wi.verdagon.com/01News.php

Except there's one problem. It inserts the news at the bottom of the page, under all the old posts. I want the new news to appear first, before all the older posts.

Here's how I set it up: The post.php page is just a form, with the "POST" action that posts to http://wi.verdagon.com/addnews.php and then the addnews.php takes what and puts the cool fancy tables around them. Then it adds the result to http://wi.verdagon.com/news.txt AT THE END of it.
The way http://wi.verdagon.com/01News.php works is it uses the "require()" function to include news.txt.

Here's the code for the addnews.php page (well, the important part):

   <?php
    $filename = "news.txt";
    $somecontent = "<tr><td><a name=5></a>".$begin.$date.$resume."<b>Subject: ".$subject."</b><br>".$news."<br><div align=right>- ".$name."</div>".$end."</td></tr>\n";
    if (is_writable($filename))
    {
     if (fwrite($handle, $somecontent) == FALSE)
     {
      echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
      exit;
     }
     echo "Success, wrote to $filename";
     fclose($handle);
    }
    echo "<br><br><br>", $somecontent;
   ?>

Basically, I need to know how to insert text to the beginning of a text file. How can I do this? Thank you all so much in advance for helping me.

planetsim

Welcome to the board. I havent used the filesystem functions for a little while now so im not sure on an exact script however you will need to use [man]fseek[/man] take a look at it and look at user comments also. Have a go at searching im positive this has been discussed before

Goodluck 🙂

Verd

Thanks for the quick reply!

I've tried using fseek earlier to go to the beginning of the file, and that's exactly what it did. I then wrote to the file, and it overwrote the other stuff in the file. Is there a way to insert it and not overwrite?

Thanks! Muchly appreciated.🙂 😃

PS. And yes I have searched this entire forum( and the entire web, lol:eek: )

PallaviDalvi

Does this help???

$new_post = "this is new here\n";
$new_post .= file_get_contents( "news.txt" );

$fl = fopen( "news.txt" , "w" );
fwrite ( $fl , $new_post );
fclose( $fl );

TheDefender

PallaviDalvi's idea should work for you, but I am going to switch things around on you... Why not just write it at the end of the file, then later when you pull the file contents into an array to display it later, you can [man]rsort()[/man] it. I don't like to post over others, but I personally fear manipulating files when I am writing at the beginning. I am always worried my data will somehow get overwritten. I feel more secure just tacking onto the end... Just another option for you.

Verd

Originally posted by PallaviDalvi
Does this help???

$new_post = "this is new here\n";
$new_post .= file_get_contents( "news.txt" );

$fl = fopen( "news.txt" , "w" );
fwrite ( $fl , $new_post );
fclose( $fl );

[/B]

I tried this and it works! Thank you very much! ooo I'm so glad. Now I can show it to everyone 😃

TheDefender

Yeah, use the [man]file()[/man] function to read the contents to display them. (This will read each line into an array for you)

Then use [man]rsort()[/man] to reverse sort the array from bottom to top.

Then just display the values of the array as you normally would, and it will go from bottom to top instead of top to bottom.

PallaviDalvi

well Verd...i just wanted to know how the code i posted added text to the end of the file... acc to me...it cannot add to the end unless the file is opened in append mode...
u want to try out the other method... perfect with me...my concern is why my code failed! 🙁

TheDefender

Pallavi... your method worked... Verd appended his/her post. (My method is out there for the grabbing for other readers though in case they prefer to use arrays. 🙂 )

PallaviDalvi

🙂 realised it...

tommynanda

Originally posted by TheDefender
Yeah, use the [man]file()[/man] function to read the contents to display them. (This will read each line into an array for you)

Then use [man]rsort()[/man] to reverse sort the array from bottom to top.

Then just display the values of the array as you normally would, and it will go from bottom to top instead of top to bottom.

Just curious, how would the function rsort() help here.. rsort is supposed to reverse alpha order or highest to lowest of values... and the news he posted is in ORDER BY date.. but not alpha order... I guess he has to include a seperate field like ID... OR is there a work around...

Currently I am using this kinda application and I am using arrays and fgets() to overcome this... I would love to hear if there is a easier way....

No offense meant
TommYNandA

TheDefender

I'm sorry, [man]array_reverse()[/man], not rsort().

Verd

I'd like to thank you all for your help. If you want, you guys can check out at wi.verdagon.com in the news section. It's really cool, cuz me and my staff members can login at the home page and then post from there...

Thank you everyone for helping me. This new system is so totally radical!

tommynanda

thats a good website verd... just as a note use stripslashes() function to avoid \' instead of ' in your messages read from file

Make sure to mark this thread resolved... link is at the bottom of this page

Happy Coding!
TommYNandA