[RESOLVED] str_replace is removing entire values

lisa99

Hello.

I have a multiple file uploader that uploads 3 specific csv files (moving quickbooks data into mysql is the end goal here) and upon a successful upload, I am attempting to parse through the csv and echo an html table of the values.

There are two problems:

the text values are in double quotes (e.g. "value") and anything I have tried to remove these double quotes removes the entire value.

$replace=array('!', '@', '#', '%', '^', '&', '*', '(', ')', '_', '+', '=', '-', '[', ']', '\\', '|', '}', '{', ';', '\'', '"', ':', '/', '<', '>', '?', '`', '~');
$file_items=file_get_contents("uploads/items.csv");
$x=explode("\r\n", $file_items);

echo"<table border=\"1\">";
foreach($x as $k => $v)
{
	if($k==0)
	{
	echo"<tr>";
	$values=explode(",", $v);
		foreach($values as $key => $value)
		$value=str_replace($replace, "", $value); //this seems to be the problem
		{
		echo"<th>$value</th>";
		}
	echo"</tr>";
	}else{
		 echo"<tr>";
		 $values=explode(",", $v);
			foreach($values as $key => $value)
			{
			$value=str_replace($replace, "", $value); //this seems to be the problem
			echo"<td>$value</td>";
			}
		 echo"</tr>";
		 }
}
echo"</table>";

#echo"<pre>";
#var_dump($x);
#echo"</pre>";
}

There's some kind of a dot that looks like a bullet point I that I don't know how to replace since I don't know what it is...

#comparing a period . to this dot thing · that I don't know how to replace...

Krik

On the str_replace issue that is odd you could try [man]preg_replace[/man] instead. I should note that the first user contributed notes, in the manual, on [man]strtr[/man] could prove very helpful to you.

For that dot, its ISO character is &middot and ISO number is 183. And if the note on strtr doesn't work for this also, you can use [man]htmlspecialchars[/man] to convert it to it ISO. You should note that if you can copy and paste it into a form here you can probably copy and paste it into your code editor.

lisa99

Thanks for the help with &middot -- I didn't know what to call it.

I looked at that comment in the php manual under strtr and that function worked perfectly for absolutely everything except the header row of my table. I noticed that the function demonstrated in the php manual uses preg_replace which I have applied to everything, but still no luck with the header row.

All other rows and columns are now aligned properly and both quotes and middots have been removed.

When I use var_dump, this is what shows up for the header row:

/*
string(256) ","Active Status","Type","Item","Description","Sales Tax Code","Account","COGS Account","Asset Account","Accumulated Depreciation","Purchase Description","Quantity On Hand","U/M","U/M Set","Cost","Preferred Vendor","Tax Agency","Price","Reorder Point","MPN""
*/

The only cell that appears in the header row is MPN (the last one) which makes no sense at all to me.

All I am attempting to do is explode at the commas and put each value in a cell. I have done this many times before (granted, not with csv files, but other data) and I don't understand why it is not working.

Could it be an encoding issue? UTF-8 or something?
Are those double quotes not really double quotes?

Krik

Are those double quotes not really double quotes?

That can be a problem besides quote (&quote (")), there is double prime (&Prime (&#8243😉) the left and right double quotation (&ldquo (“) &rdquo(”)) and I think there is one other.

But if you copied and pasted what you have there they look to be regular quotes.

I have done this many times before (granted, not with csv files, but other data)

You do know that PHP has functions specifically for handling CSV files [man]fgetcsv[/man], [man]fputcsv[/man] and [man]str_getcsv[/man]

When I use var_dump, this is what shows up for the header row:

There must be some other factor in the file that is causing that.

The only thing I can think of is, if you are looping through the data using a counting method make sure you are starting a 0.

lisa99

Thanks for the help Krik, it now seems to be working.

I found this to work: http://code.google.com/p/parsecsv-for-php/

and it now shows an empty cell at the beginning of each row -- I think it is the formatting that comes from QuickBooks that was the problem. Each row was enclosed with an extra pair of double quotes and began with a comma.

like this...

/*
","value1","value2","\r\n
*/

Looking at the functions used in that google hosted code, I was able to see how they were parsing through it and it makes more sense, though I don't fully understand why Quickbooks encloses each line with an extra set of double quotes or begins each line with a comma. I'm not able to find formatting options in Quickbooks that will stop it from doing this, but I can come back to this issue when I'm not under a deadline.

Thanks again for your help. It is greatly appreciated.