Counting items in text file

dark_stranger

Hi, thanks for replying and hopefully I have the info you need, although there maybe a better code that will be more suitable for this problem like php. I am trying to get some php code or other code to count certain values in a text file and display them on a webpage. The text file is for a shopping cart and stores item details such as what catogory the item is in (1st coloum).

1|halffrag|1|8001|9004|HalfFrag|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
2|FullFrag|1|8001|9005|FullFrag|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
3|DoubleFrag|1|8001|9006|DoubleFrag|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
4|Colony|1|8001|9007|Colony|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
1|Colony|1|8001|9007|Colony|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,

One of my requirments is to display on my home page the number of items in a catogory. The value can be seen in the first coloum, therefore currently there is 1 item in each of the 4 catogories and 2 item in cat "1". Therefore is it possible to display on the front page the number of items in catogoy "1"? and then i can alter for 2, 3, 4, etc

Therefore there are 2 items in catogory "1"

Thanks in advance,

stolzyboy

You'll need to use http://docs.php.net/file to read the file into an array.

Then just use a foreach loop and loop through the results and keep track of the numbers by searching for 1, 2, 3, etc...

While this can all be done with a txt file, this would be MUCH easier and expandable using a DB.

dark_stranger

looking at that (and im no expert) it reads the entire file into an array, would it not be better to read only the required records, i.e. catogory "1" and then count those in the array?

laserlight

looking at that (and im no expert) it reads the entire file into an array, would it not be better to read only the required records, i.e. catogory "1" and then count those in the array?

Yes, but it is not as trivial as reading everything into an array. (Or using a relational database, for that matter.)

dark_stranger

Hi, trying to figure it out and going on the link that was provided...

at this point I was going to attempt the coding, but confused myself. In the example on the link, it copies the lines in the txt file & places them in an array, but then displays all the lines.

How would it do it so that i put the txt file contents into an array, then counted those in catogory n, then only display those in catogory n?

Thanks,

Horizon88

I have to ask, why aren't you using a relational database system like mySQL?

dark_stranger

Looking further into this, I would need to get the txt file into an array, then "count" the array for specific values. I know how to do it in plain english, but php? if you could point me in the right direction :o)

dark_stranger

Horizon88 wrote:
I have to ask, why aren't you using a relational database system like mySQL?

I am using a shopping cart that uses paypal, but instead of the shopfront, I am using my own site and the shopping cart using flat files instead of a RDBS.

Horizon88

You'll need a couple of arrays and a foreach loop, most likely, but this is going to be a godawful bad kludge. You really ought to try a different shopping cart for your own sanity - mySQL was created for just this sort of reason.

But what you'd want to do is use file() to read each line into an array of lines, then using foreach or a for() loop, explode each line out into component parts:

$lines = file('whatever.txt');
$exploded_lines = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($lines); $i++) {
   $exploded_lines = explode('|', $lines);
}

That would give you all of the lines (records), broken into parts based on the | character. So you'd have an array something like this:
0 => array (0 => 1, 1 => 'halffrag', 2 => 3, etc etc
1 => array (0 => 2, 1 => 'fullFrag', 2 => 1, etc etc

But I stand by my mySQL recommendation

edit: hahah, we need an ajax script or something so we can see who is currently replying to the post or something 😛

dark_stranger

getting there 🙂 although this seems really basic to you guys.

<?php
$lines = file('categories.txt');
echo count($lines);
?>

Currently have it displaying the number of lines in the txt file. 🙂 now just need to get it to display a predefind value, such as "1" Edited: or maybe not

Edited: Posted same time.

dark_stranger

Guys, cracked it, well someone else did.

<?php
function get_item_count($file_path, $category){
$count = 0;
//open file
$f = fopen($file_path, "r");
//read next line
while($line = fgets($f)){
//break up line into columns
$columns = explode('|', $line);
//check for category value
if(trim($columns[0])==$category){
$count++;
}
}
//close file
fclose($f);
//return count
return $count;
}

print(get_item_count('data.txt', '2'));
?>

Horizon88

That does the same thing I was telling you to, but uses more lines.

dark_stranger

Hi, I have no knowledge of ph & therefore it was a ready made solution that was fit for purpose :o)

Weedpacket

If you don't want to install a full DBMS like MySQL just for this then there's still the option of flat-file storage using SQLite.

My turn at "counting number of lines in the file that start with '1|'":

$cat = 1;
$count = count(preg_grep('/^'.$cat.'\|/', file('data.txt')));

If the file is too big for file() to be convenient then reading it line by line may be used instead, but an file with indexed records would be significantly better.