How To get Data Out of a File...

[Jamez]

Hello,

I have data in the middle of a file that I need to be able to pull out of the file and replace...

Right now it looks like this:

---

<!--%START%-->
blah <br>
blah <br>
blah

<!--%END%-->

I'm trying to use the <!--%START%--> as a "beginning" point and the end as an end point....

The only code i have tried is :

<?
$grab_url = "http://www.someurl.com/dir/template.php"; 
$lines=file($grab_url); 

// set up the start and end strings 
$req_str="<--%START%-->"; 
$end_str="<--%END%-->"; 
// then scan each line for the required string 

unset($the_str); 
for($loop=0; $loop<count($lines); $loop++ ) 
{ 
if ( stristr($lines[$loop], $req_str) ) 
{ 
//got the start string now need to extract the bit we want 
$startbit=strstr($lines[$loop], $req_str); 
$endbit=strstr($lines[$loop], $end_str); 
$str_pos=strlen($lines[$loop])-strlen($startbit); 
$bit_len=strlen($startbit)-strlen($endbit); 
$boneci=substr($lines[$loop], $str_pos, $bit_len); 
break; 
} 
} 

echo "$boneci"; 
?>

However this is not working. Does anyone know how to modify the code to work, or a completely seperate code that will ?

[rehfeld]

regular expressions make stuff like this very easy

$subject = file_get_contents('somefile');

$pattern = '#<!--%START%-->(.*?)<!--%END%-->#s';

preg_match($pattern, $subject, $matches);

echo $matches[1];

[devinemke]

you actually don't necessarily need regex for this

$contents = file_get_contents('http://www.someurl.com/dir/template.php');
$explode = explode('<!--%START%-->', $contents);
$explode = explode('<!--%END%-->', $explode[1]);

echo $explode[0];

[Jamez]

Awesome that worked. Now, the tricky part - how can i replace the content in that part of the file with new content?

[devinemke]

[man]fopen[/man]
[man]fwrite[/man]
[man]fclose[/man]

[Jamez]

I dont want to overwrite all the contents of the file, only the part that i just grabbed with that variable.

[devinemke]

Originally posted by Jamez
I dont want to overwrite all the contents of the file, only the part that i just grabbed with that variable.

you can't. you must overwrite the whole file.