help : php duplicate extry in plain text

miniop

Hello all,

I need help with my php code.

I have a code that when some writes www.domain.com/1.php?name="variable"
The variable is saved into a plain text name.txt

Now i need some help to count the duplicate entries for the name.txt and do something. I tried to find some information but i couldn't find anything.

Example :

The name.txt has this information
line 1 - name1
line 2 - name2
line 3 - name1
line 4 - name3

Now when the php code search the name.txt for the "variable" if it doesn't find it then write the "variable" to name.txt and echo something
if the "variable" is already 1 time then echo something and write the "variable" again to name.txt
if the "variable" is already 2 times in the name.txt then echo something and write the "variable" again in name.txt
if the "variable" is already 3 times then echo something and write the "variable" again in name.txt
if the "variable" is more than 3 times then echo something and dont write anything to name.txt

Anyone can help ?

Thank you.

bradgrafelman

Any reason you aren't using a SQL database for this?

miniop

Because yet i dont have a sql to test.
And i think its better to understand first the plain text and make some examples and then proceed with sql.

anyone can help ?

Thank you

laserlight

miniop wrote:
And i think its better to understand first the plain text and make some examples and then proceed with sql.

It is good to understand how to work with plain text files, and I can agree with doing that before learning about databases and SQL. However, what you are doing is basically implementing a simple flat file database, and I do not agree that it is better to understand how to implement flat file databases before using a relational database with SQL.

miniop

laserlight: yes i agree but this is a project for my university
Next project will be sql 🙂.

I have succeed capture the variables and can save it in the plain text but i dont know anything how to find duplicates / how many are and then do what i want (everything depending on the ?name="variable")

bradgrafelman

If you've got the names loaded into an array (e.g. via [man]file/man), then you could write a function that searches through the array and counts the number of occurrences of a given string. Simply use a [man]foreach/man loop and a counter variable that gets increased every time a value in the array matches the search key.