Counter on a fixed place on the screen

ludootje

I have a bunch (several 10s of thousands...) text files to loop through. Each text file needs to undergo a series of PHP operations. I am looking for some sort of counter mechanism, showing where the operation is.

Sounds easy enough: I can make a $counter variable, and increment it by 1 when the next file is opened, etc. I have made something with ob_flush() before opening and flush() after closing a text file. This shows a continuing row of $counter contents, something like “17 18 19 20 21” etc.

That looks rather clumsy, though, considering that I’m talking about thousands of files and hence thousands of counter positions. So, I am looking for a way to display the $counter at a Fixed Position on the screen...

In pseudo-code:

<code>
$my_text_collection = $array_with_filenames;
$counter = 1;
while (not at the end of $array_with_filenames) {
echo_at_a_fixed_placed($counter);
$x = open_up($array_with_filenames[$counter]
$y = do_some_stuff_to($x);
$z = get_rid_of($x)
$counter++;
}
</code>

The tough part is the “echo_at_a_fixed_place” thingy... There are tons of Javascript counters out there, time- or cookie- or file-based, but they appear very cumbersome to work with. And I’m afraid using Javascript will prove inevitable, because I want to echo something While PHP is doing is processing, which is not what PHP likes to do. Unfortunately, Javascript is a completely unknown world for me.

So, my hope is to find someone out here who could help me out with this “echo_at_a_fixed_place” problem, preferably with a working example...

coldwerturkey

maybe with javascript do something like

<script type='text/javascript'>
function counterrr(val) {
	document.myform.mycounter.value = val;
}
</script>


<form name="myform">
	<input type="text" name="mycounter" value="">
</form>


<?php
	$i 		= 1;
	$cap 	= 500000;


while ($i != $cap) {
	if (substr($i, -2) == 00)
	echo "
		<script type='text/javascript'>
			counterrr('".$i."');
		</script>";

	$i++;
}	
?>

The "00" is so you're not updating the count EVERY time, only every hundred or so...

I'm not that great in js, and the downside to this would be that it creates a lot of text in the source file, so maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can help you better or expand on this idea.

(also: instead of "<code>" use bbcode: "

")

ludootje

Thanks for your reply, Coldwerturkey, I'll give it a run!
In the meantime, I concocted something myself - and it works, without any Javascript or whatever, just plain old PHP and a whisk of CSS. It's not quite fool-proof, and it will give you a blank screen if you simply insert it in a page, but it's a "skeleton" to continue with. Here goes:


<html>
<head>

<style type="text/css">
h2 {
position:absolute;
left:100px;
top:150px;
font-size:1.92em;
}

h2.whitecharacters {
color:white;
}
</style>

</head>
<body>

<?php
ob_flush();
$counter = 0;
while ($counter < 15) {
	sleep(2); // or other time-consuming PHP operations
	$oldcounter = $counter; // needed to 'erase' the previous counter!!!!
	$counter++;
	echo "<h2 class='whitecharacters'>" . $oldcounter . "</h2>"; 
	echo "<h2>" . $counter . "</h2>";
	flush();
}
?>

</body>
</html>

It's definitely not world shattering code, but for my particular needs, just a "stable counter", it does the job, without having to master an entirely new language :-)

coldwerturkey

Yes, it's definitely not world shattering code, in fact it's terrible.. layering thousands of numbers, with white-text numbers, is very silly.

You don't need to "master" any new language, the snippet I provided only has one line of javascript, that can be understood by novice users. and more importantly, it works, it acts as a "stable counter" updating a single number periodically as the loop and document progresses. Don't be afraid of javascript! It exists to help!

(also: including sleep() in place of a function doesn't help for anyone trying to learn from this. sleep() - in the context you've used it - just lags the load for 30seconds, it doesn't act the same as a time-consuming operation/function would)

ludootje

Coldwerturkey
You stated that "it (i.e. the sleep() call) doesn't act the same as a time-consuming operation/function would)".

I replaced the "sleep(2)" part in my code snippet with a bunch of time-consuming textfile operations, on a series of just a couple of hundreds of texts, and the counter still did what it was expected to do: it counted :-) Because some files took longer to process than others, the counter "hickuped" a bit, but that is also what it was supposed to do: it's a counter, not a timer.

I agree that sleep() cannot Always be used as a replacement for "do something which takes a bit of time", but in this case, it worked just fine.

And I agree also that layering numbers with white numbers is Very Silly, as you pointed out - but it works! I wasn't attempting to write the Grand Finale of counter scripts, but for my little goal the code works just fine. Your code had just 1 line of Javascript code, but I've googled other counter scripts which had literally pages and pages of Javascript, jùst to reach the same goal, i.e. count steps. That felt like a Lot of overkill. I don't want to "defend" my code in any way, I readily admit that it's kitchen sink programming - but it works :-)

coldwerturkey

let me emphasize what I said:

"including sleep() in place of a function doesn't help for anyone trying to learn from this" all it does is pause a load for 30 seconds lol.. it doesn't show the counter working. it shows blank than the last count number. you should of just put a comment there, not sleep() it. There's ZERO point to including sleep() in your example.. remeber you're not the only person who will have this same question, and probably try the code, I'm sure dozens else will.

your code isn't "kitchen sink programming" it's the gunk-and-old-hair-you-find-in-the--kitchen-stink-after-150-years-of-washing-dirt-into-it programming.

ludootje

No need for insults, Coldwerturkey. I appreciated your efforts and your code, and it does work. Congratulations. But mine works too, maybe not on your system, but on mine at least it does. And because I don't understand one bit about Javascript, I therefore wanted to avoid it. I think I underlinded several times that I did not consider my "code" to be beautiful. I'm not encouraging anyone to use it. I just said that I was looking for a very simple counter. So, with your permission, I would like to be a tiny bit satisfied, not with my code, but with the simple fact that my problem is solved. And maybe it works for others, maybe it doesn't. They're welcome to try it, or not to try it. I think that is true for the vast majority of approaches offered in programming forums. And there is nothing wrong with that. We learn, even from other people's "dirty programming". Sigh