How to extract data from a file?

Yogiz

Hi there,

I was wondering if someone could help me out with extracting data from a flat file into an array.

So that I can then be put into a table.

The file I'm working with looks like this;

1193188579.500 63 10.164.117.2 TCP_MISS/200 902 GET www - DIRECT/212.187.229.42 text/html

Thanks in advance

NogDog

[man]file/man will load a file into an array, one line per array element.

If you want to break that single line down into an array, then you'll need to specify how the fields of that line are delimited. You might be able to use [man]explode[/man] if the fields break on a space or other character. If it's not that simple, then more complex things will need to be done, depending on what those criteria are.

Yogiz

The format stays the same 10 columns single space between them.

NogDog

Then just use [man]explode[/man](' ', $text);

Yogiz

Could you provide me with some code just to get me started?

NogDog

Thought that's what I did. 😉

Look at [man]file_get_contents/man if you just want to load the whole file into one string, or [man]file/man if you want to load each line of that file into a separate element of an array. Then use [man] explode/man as suggested above, returning its result to an array.

Yes, I could spoon-feed you the precise code I might use, but you'll actually learn and understand it if you spend 5-10 minutes reading those links, looking at their examples, and then try to write the code yourself. If it doesn't work, just post what you wrote along with any error messages you get, and we'll help you debug it until you get a solution that works and makes sense to you.

Yogiz

What about if I insert all the data from the log file into a database and then perform statystics on it by simply extracting the data from the database?

How could I go on about doing that?

bradgrafelman

NogDog's essentially shown you all the tools... here's a bit of code:

$data = file('filename.txt'); // loads file into an array - line-by-line

foreach($data as $line) {
  $columns = explode(' ', $line);

  // $columns[0] through $columns[9] hold the 10(?) columns
  // might want to include some error-checking to ensure that there ARE 10 columns
  // from here, just perform INSERT queries
}

That should be all you need. If it doesn't work, show us what you tried.