Building a site from a txt file

horse

I am basically trying to redo in PHP something I already did with webDNA/webcataloge in 1997/98.

I guess I can learn some PHP at the same time. It is probably easier when I aknow what I want to do.

I have a tab delimited txt file .. and I can xml tag it if needed. The file is output from a database that contains all the info needed. This is supposed to be a product catalog.

There might even be some similar code available already. I am pretty sure if there is. I am probably not the first guy who wants to do this based on a flat file database in txt format.
So what I am bascally asking is: You guys know of some code examples and stuff that can do what I need it to do?

devinemke

i see posts like this often here and my stock answer is this: don't try and re-invent the wheel. we already have a wheel, it's called a database. trying to simluate the fucntionality of the database by using txt files is much more trouble than it's worth. there is plently of cheap/free database technology out there. have a look at mySQL.

horse

THX for the reply.
Sure, databases are cool. This is actually the output from a pretty huge Filemaker thingie that builds press quality PDF files. Long story.. Anyways, theoretically there shouldn´t be a need for any databases here. All the data is already contained in a text file. The idea was to cut some corners and just have the site based on the export file every time the product databse is changed. I did the exact same thing years ago using the webcatalog CGI. I simply thought that doing the same with PHP would be just as easy. Only difference is that I have to learn PHP. 🙂
If reading a tab delimited text file/ xml tagged text file is extremely hard to do in PHP I can always go for some PHP/mySQL solution instead.