Importing A Flat File

rasmas

HI All

I am trying to write a PHP page that I can use to update and and new items to a mysql database.

the layout of the file is as follows
Position 1 to 10 - partn Number
Position 11 to 40 - Discription
Position 41 to 49 - Price (decimal 7,2)
Position 50 to 58 - weight (decimal 5,4)
Position 59 to 67 - Price (decimal 7,2)
Position 68 to 70 - currancy

I have created the folloing table in My SQL
CREATE TABLE bsa_std_price (
Part_Number varchar(10) NOT NULL default '',
Description varchar(30) NOT NULL default '',
Transfer_Price decimal(9,2) unsigned zerofill NOT NULL default '0000000.00',
Weight decimal(9,4) NOT NULL default '00000.0000',
End_User_Price decimal(9,2) NOT NULL default '0000000.00',
Currancy char(3) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (Part_Number)
)

This is a line from the file
00270000 NMACTRON 1ST + 2ND GLUE TRACK 003198270000010000004177920CHF

This is all on one line

I need to write a PHP file that will read this file and then either add the new items or update any old ones.

Where would I start

Thanks
Martin

subwayman

I won't give you all the code but here are a few hints:

Read each line of the file with fgets() which will read a line at a time.

$part_number = substr($buffer,0,10); will put the first 10 chars of the line (i n $buffer) into $part_number.

You should then be able to construct an insert query to add a record to your table.

rasmas

thanks for the help got it working, the only problem is that with a very large file I get the following error

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in .....

How do i change it?

Thanks
Martin

subwayman

There are several limits which can affect long running scripts. Check out your PHP.ini file. Also there may be limits set in your server. Furthermore, browsers will time out waiting for a response from the server. The mix can be complex and it takes a better person than I to have the patience to work out what is holding things up each time.

If I have a very large file to parse I cheat and upload it to the server using ftp and then run a script against it that processes say 2000 records at a time (use a file or db to store where you are between each execution of the script). You could use cron to run it multiple times if you don't want to babysit it. I guess this is a one time process so it might be wise to KISS (keep it simple, stupid). Something I am a great fan of.

maxpup979

to alter the time limit, use set_time_limit()