Append some data in txt file

joane1

hi all
my txt file is this:

[section1]
data1
data2
data_three...

[section2]
data15
data other
data three...

[sectionN]
data1
some data
data_four...

From a web page, if a check the buttonA I must append some values in section1 of the file; if i click buttonB I must append values in section2 and so on...

How can I do this? i've tried with file() and fopen() but without good results.

Thanks 😉

laserlight

You probably can use file(), but it depends on how you use it.

What did you try?

Incidentally, if your file format uses name/value pairs, you can just use [man]parse_ini_file/man.

joane1

My txt file is not as a ini file: the syntax is as i've posted above
I using

$op = file_get_contents($filename);
echo "<pre>$op</pre>";

and I obtain the contents of file.

Now, I would obtain only the name of [sections]:
[section1]
[section2]
[sectionN]
and, from web page if I click on buttonA, i will append my values in section1 and so on.
How can i procede?

laserlight

I suggest something along these lines:

$lines = file($filename);
$data = array();
$section = null;
for ($i = 0; $i < count($lines); ++$i) {
    $line = rtrim($lines[$i]); // Remove trailing newline from file().
    if (preg_match('/^\[(.+)\]$/', $line, $matches)) {
        // New section found, so add it to the array.
        $section = $matches[1];
        $data[$section] = array();
    } else if (strlen($line) > 0) {
        // Throw an exception if the section has not been set.
        if (!isset($section)) {
            throw new Exception('Invalid section');
        }
        // No problem encountered, so add data to the section.
        $data[$section][] = $line;
    }
}
print_r($data);

It basically emulates parse_ini_file() with the section handling. Appending data to a section then becomes a matter of finding the correct section array, and then appending an element.

joane1

ok, but I did not understand how to extract only the data section to insert the new values.

// No problem encountered, so add data to the section.
        $data[$section][] = $line;
	echo "<pre>";
	echo $data[$section][0];
	echo "</pre>";

the code above print:

data1
data2
data_three...

data15
data other
data three...

data1
some data
data_four...

How can individually manipulate data section?

laserlight

I did not understand how to extract only the data section to insert the new values

First, do you understand how to interpret the output of the print_r()? It basically says that $data is a two dimensional array. It is an associative array of numerically indexed arrays. These numerically indexed arrays are the sections.

So, suppose the user submits the form using buttonA. $_POST['buttonA'] will be set. Your script also maps 'buttonA' to 'section1', 'buttonB' to 'section2' etc (this can be done in a few ways, more on this later).

As such, you know that you are to look for the section named 'section1', and then add the data (let's call this $POST['data']. This is almost trivial:

// assume $section = 'section1'
if (array_key_exists($data, $section)) {
    $data[$section][] = $_POST['data'];
}

Okay, maybe you added other data to other sections as well, did your thing, etc. Now you want to write it all back. To do this, you must write the code to transform the $data array into a string that has the format of your text file, and then fwrite() it to the text file.