how to perform search in a .inc file ??

PHPycho

Hello forums!!
I have the following question
1> i hava a file with .inc extension(here i had given filename.inc) and it contains the comma separated values as "EnglishWord"=>"DutchWord" , etc..
I want to perform the search in this file in such a way that -
if the user enters the word in a dutch then it should look in the file and give the corresponding english word
For example
if i entered the word 'Adres' and it should give the 'Address' as result

filename.inc

"About"=>"Betreft",
"Active Projects"=>"Actieve Projecten",
"Add"=>"Toevoegen",
"Address"=>"Adres",
"Administration"=>"Administratie",
"All"=>"Alle",

How to perform such search in this file ?
I would really appreciate any help from forums .
Thanks in advance to all of you !!

etully

There are a dozen ways to do what you are looking for. The problem is that some of them are faster and more efficient than others.

It's very important that you not choose a solution based on the format of the text file that you have.

In other words, it would take about 3 minutes to convert your text file into an array which could then be included as a PHP file and search the array for your Dutch word. But that solution is very slow and wasteful of memory - and it's only going to get slower as your text file learns more and more English and Dutch words. Even though this is the easiest solution to implement, it's going to cause the most problems down the road.

You should create a database and import your text file into a table. If you don't have much experience with databases, this project could take you all day. Even when you are an expert, it's still going to take you 10-20 minutes. That seems a lot longer than the 3 minutes it would take you to create an array out of the text file... but honestly, it's worth the extra set up time.

There are 250,000 words in the English language and 25,000 of them are in common use. If your array keeps getting bigger and bigger and ends up with 25,000 Dutch and English words, it's going to take 30 seconds to look up a word and you're going to need to buy extra RAM for your computer. A database will be fast and lightweight even with hundreds of thousands of records.

PHPycho

If i go for the database design what would be the table structure for translation?

Here mine attempt is the following:

| translation |

I dont know whether that table is perfect for the translation or not.
Any suggestion regarding the translation database are warmly welcome..
Thanks in advance to all of you !!

leatherback

Hi,

I am not sure whether this is the most elegant solution or not.. I feel it should be possible with one table, but cannot get my head around it. So I will suggest using 2 tables, and a lookup 🙂

Table one: master table, with all the words in your principle language (I assume english):

[base_table]
bt_id
bt_word

e.g.,
[1][tree]
[2][dog]

[translations_table]
t_word_nr
t_word
t_lidwoord
t_lan_nr

[1][boom][de][1]
[1][arbol][el][2]
[2][hond][de][1]
[2][chien][le][3]

[languages]
l_id
l_description

e.g.,
[1][nederlands]
[2][Espanol]
3[][Francais]

query = "
select * from base_table
left join translations_table on bt_td = t_word_nr
left join languages on t_lan_nr = l_id
where l_description='nederlands'
and t_word = 'boom'
";

Roger_Ramjet

It does so very much depend on what the translation is being used for. There is no one-one mapping between the words of different languages. So unless you are working with a restricted vocabulary and in a clearly defined context things can soon become garbled. An example of what I mean would be 'contract' which means both an agreement and to shrink. How does that translate into Dutch or German?

Now, if you are happy that your text file holds just the words that you need then 1 table will do it.

Personally I would just use the translation tools that Altavista Babel Fish provides - it is at least as good as anything I could come up with. The script as they provide it is a bit intrusive, but with FireBug or the like you can trap it and modify it for your own needs: make it into an AJAX utility would be cool.

etully

Since this is a PHP forum, I was addressing the basic question, what is the best way to look up one word based on another... and for that, I was saying that an array would be inefficient. I was not addressing the larger question about how to translate between languages which is a difficult question and well beyond the scope of these forums. But Mr. Ramjet is correct, with a simple 1:1 word substitution, you are going to end up with some pretty funny translations.

For the project at hand, one table is more than enough. And yes, PHPycho, your sample structure is just fine. With your sample structure, you can convert FROM any language TO any language.

First, make an HTML form that has three fields:

FROM language (select box with options eng, dutch, span, fren)
TO language (select box with options eng, dutch, span, fren)
Word to translate. (text field)

Then build your lookup script like this:

if ($to=="English") { $to_column = "translation_english"; }
if ($to=="Dutch") { $to_column = "translation_dutch"; }
if ($to=="Spanish") { $to_column = "translation_spanish"; }
if ($to=="French") { $to_column = "translation_french"; }

if ($from=="English") { $from_column = "translation_english"; }
if ($from=="Dutch") { $from_column = "translation_dutch"; }
if ($from=="Spanish") { $from_column = "translation_spanish"; }
if ($from=="French") { $from_column = "translation_french"; }

$query = "select " . $to_column . " from translation where " . $from_column . "= '" . $word . "'";

Of course, for security, don't forget to check $word for sql injection attacks.