Putting data into an array for Insertion?

netfrugal

I've finally understood how to put data from a mysql database into an array for displaying on a webpage.

But, I am playing with the OPENDIR() function and listing all files inside a directory.

My problem is INSERTing those listed filenames into a simple mysql table. It's killing me!

<?php

$handle = opendir('/var/www/html/');

while($file = readdir($handle)){
echo "$file" . '<br>';
}

?>

I can echo the list just fine now. But, I'm still learning how to take any given array and make it go into a database.

How does one INSERT the filenames into the database? I'm playing around with how to place the sql statement inside the while() loop.

thanks!

laserlight

Well... what is your database schema like?

netfrugal

The schema is very simple:

table: files
columns: recID, filenames

laserlight

Loop over the filenames and run an "INSERT INTO files (filenames) VALUES ('$filename')" in the loop. If your version of mysql supports transactions, it would be good to begin a transaction before the loop and commit it right after the loop.

netfrugal

done! and it works!

while($file = readdir($handle)){

mysql_query("INSERT INTO xyz (filenames) values ('$file')");


}

Now, I got all the data inside the table xyz. But, here's a tricky question....

I will want to run this query again, but I don't want to INSERT filenames already inside the db. So, if there is a match, I want to ignore it. If there is a new filename in the while() loop, then I will want to import it.

Any ideas?

I was thinking that I could read from the xyz table first, then compare that loop to the loop above?

laserlight

You could declare the filenames column as UNIQUE.

An alternative is to read the filenames from the directory, read the filenames from the table, then apply [man]array_diff/man and run queries on the resulting array... but that may be susceptible to race condition problems.