Exporting data into a text file

hbradshaw

Hello:

It's been a long time since I had the need to create a dataset based on a specified data file format.

I'm designing a website for a mortgage broker. On his site he wants to have the ability for people to complete a loan application. No problem there, I'm using PHP to process the form.

He has a third party software which keeps track of the loan and prepares all the necessary documents for closing. He needs to import that data from the loan app on the website into this third party software.

The software uses a data file format from Fannie Mae. I have their data dictionary along with the data file format information showing the position of each field, length of each field, etc.

How do I go about creating this dataset from the information entered via the online loan application? What tools are being used in order to achieve this?

I hope someone can steer me in the right direction to accomplish this.

Thank you for any help.

devinemke

you say you have their formatting specs...so then put all of the submitted data into a formatted string and write it all to a file using [man]fopen[/man] and [man]fwrite[/man].

hbradshaw

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

How do I put the data into a formatted string? Where can I do some more reading on formatting the data into strings as well as more detail explanation on fopen and fwrite?

Here is an example of the specs:
fname pos 1 length 5
lname pos 6 length 15
dob pos 16 length 20

Thank you for the help.

devinemke

hbradshaw wrote:
How do I put the data into a formatted string? Where can I do some more reading on formatting the data into strings as well as more detail explanation on fopen and fwrite?

Here is an example of the specs:
fname pos 1 length 5
lname pos 6 length 15
dob pos 16 length 20

you can start by following the links i provided in my post above. as far as the spec is concerned, what is the delimiter between fields? you say pos1, pos2, etc.. but how are these positions delimited?

hbradshaw

Hello:

The file format seems to use a space as a delimiter between fields or no delimiter. It is very hard to tell from the data mapping. The documentation doesn't specify the delimiter. All it specifies is the position and the length.

I'll review the links you gave me about fopen and fwrite.

Thanks for your help.

nemonoman

Length based form fields are very typical of older mainframe computers -- think cobol

fname pos 1 length 5
lname pos 6 length 15
dob pos 16 length 20
address pos 21 length 15

Nemo Noman, dob Christmas 2004 of 123 Any Street=


Nemo Noman         12/25/2004          123 Any Street 
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

This is what all those pad functions are for in a database or PHP, like MySQL RPAD or LPAD
RPAD(str,len,padstr)

SELECT CONCAT(RPAD(fname, 5,' '),RPAD(lname,15,' '),RPAD(dob,20,' '),RPAD(address,15,' ' )) FROM customer

hbradshaw

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I think I see what's happening here. I'll give it a try and hopefully I'll get what I need.