How to: Edit the middle of a file?

[Pobega]

I use Text files as my database files for holding all my info, and I explode it by '||'.

Now I know to add text to the end of a file I just use fopen('', 'a');, and to edit the beginning

$var =get_file_contents('');
fopen('', 'w');
fwrite('', 'stuff');
fwrite('', $var);
fclose('');

But how would I edit something in the middle of a file?

[brandtj]

You have to read the whole file to a variable, replace one section of it, then write it all out again.

Let's assume the contents of the file is:

1||first||2||second||3||third

Your code would be:

$file = file_get_contents ('./file.txt');
$items = explode ('||', $file);

for ($i = 0; $i < count ($items) / 2; $i++) {
   $sets[] = array ($items[2 * $i], $items[2 * $i + 1]);
}

/* the array now looks like:
$sets = array (array ('1', 'first'), array ('2', 'second'), array ('3', 'third'));
*/

// to delete the item, set $new_string = false;
// to edit, set it to something else

$key_to_replace = '2';
$new_string = 'hey there';

just copy and paste this new foreach loop:

foreach ($sets as $k => $v) {
   if ($v[0] == $key_to_replace) {
      if ($new_string === false) {
         unset ($sets[$k]);
      } else {
         $sets[$k][1] = $new_string;
      }

  break;
   }
}

$edit = '';

foreach ($sets as $v) {
   $edit .= $v[0] . '||' . $v[1] . '||';
}


$fopen = fopen ('./file.txt', 'w');
fwrite ($fopen, substr ($edit, 0, strlen ($edit) - 2));
fclose ($fopen);

I hope that's got it. 😃 I'll test and edit if I need to, haha.

[Pobega]

o.o

I think I may not know enough php yet to do this...I don't understand 80% of the stuff you did there... >_>