Storing Thread Views in a Text File

ElectricRain

Someone tells me that its more practical than storing them in a database, and doing yet another query everytime someone views the page. I believe them. The trouble is its a long while since I stored anything in a text file, and even then, it was just read and write, not select a specific line. Ive dug through google and the manual, but all I found is a headache.

What I want, is a textfile with
ThreadId|Views

and then the current number of views for each thread.

I got as far as

$threadviews_file = "thread_views.txt";
$threadviews_open = fopen($threadviews_file, "r");
$threadviews_read = fread($threadviews_open, filesize($threadviews_file)); //read entire file
fclose($threadviews_open);
echo $threadviews_read;

To read the entire file and echo it out. What I want to do, is select the relevant line, based on thread id, and echo that out. Im also going to want to write to a specific line soon, to update the number of views. and I cant seem to find a decent tutorial on this. Dyou know of any?

cheerio

$YOURFILE = "yourfile.txt";
$FILE_CONTENT = file_get_contents($YOURFILE);
$file_array = explode("\n",$FILE_CONTENT);

//Line #0
echo $file_array[0];

PWN3D

ElectricRain

Uhm.. ok.. I'll try that, but where do I specify the thread ID I want it to find the number of views for? I wont necesarily know what line it is on, cant I search for a specific ID, and echo out the views relevant for that one?

Weedpacket

Yes, but you have to read the file first to search it.

ElectricRain

Yes but I already had the bit that reads it. 🙁

The code I posted right at the start reads the file and echoes out the contents. What Im stuck on is reading the line with a specific ID.

ElectricRain

OH I get it.. so the second code works better because it reads it into a string, and then I just search the string.

Ok I think I can manage that. Thanks.

Erm.. any pointers to tutorials for editing a line without affecting the rest of the text file? Do I edit the array then clear the file and write the entire thing back in? Is that practical? What if something goes wrong, Id loose the entire file...

Weedpacket

It would be slightly easier to use [man]file[/man]; otherwise you end up with two copies of the file sitting around: the string and the array of lines.

Erm.. any pointers to tutorials for editing a line without affecting the rest of the text file? Do I edit the array then clear the file and write the entire thing back in? Is that practical? What if something goes wrong, Id loose the entire file...

More or less. You could write the updated array to a new file, and (assuming that succeeds) delete the old file, and rename the new file to the old name.

Or you could use a database 🙂

ElectricRain

This is for storing thread views for a forum, and I was under the impression its less stress on the server to get something from a text file than search a potentially large table in a database, though. Is that right? Would it be more practical to have a seperate table with thread ids and views in, & do it that way with mysql?

Also, is there any way I can use explode to put the thread ID in the array keys? Or is it reasonably logical just to search the array for an entry that begins with the relevant ThreadId| ?

Currently I have:

//get thread views
$threadviews_file = "thread_views.txt"; //select text file
$threadviews_read = file($threadviews_file); //read contents into array.


$threadviews_key = "ThreadId|"; //create key (this would be threadid + | to avoid views being read as threadids)

foreach($threadviews_read as $threadviews_line) { //loop through array using foreach
if (stristr($threadviews_line, $threadviews_key)) { //look for key in each line
$this_thread_views = trim($threadviews_line, $threadviews_key); //trim key bit off
echo ($this_thread_views);
break; //stop loop
}
}

ElectricRain

Well I almost have it, I think. The problem is, If one key is IN another, It may find an incorrect result. For instance, Im using thread ids as the key. If one thread has the id 1234, and another has the id 4, they would both be found. I suppose I can fix this by putting them in numerical order, and breaking after the first result as I am? But it seems there should be a much neater way. Does anyone know how I can make it search for the ENTIRE key?

Current code:

//GET VIEWS
function get_views($views_file, $views_key) {
$views_read = file($views_file); //read contents into array.
$views_key = $views_key."|"; //create key (this would be id + | to avoid views being read as ids)
foreach($views_read as $views_line) { 
if (strstr($views_line, $views_key)) { //look for key in each line
return trim($views_line, $views_key); //trim key bit off
break; //stop loop
} else {
return "0";
}
}
}