Help in retrieving arrays from different file

[Kim Jensen]

Hi there

I currently have a .txt file (lets call it jimharper.txt) that holds a
number of arrays like for instance:

$name[] = "Jim Harper"

$relatives[] = "Joan Harper (wife)"
$relatives[] = "Beth Harper (daughter)"

$occupation[] = "Police officer"
$occupation[] = "Teacher"

That I need to be imported into another file (profile.php) so that when
I open profile.php?nam e=jimharper it extracts the information from the
jimharper.txt file which resides in a different directory.

So the output in the profile.php?nam e=jimharper would be something like:

Name: Jim Harper
Relatives: Joan Harper (wife), Beth Harper (daughter)
Occupation: Police officer, Teacher

I can figure out how to do it if the arrays were in the same file as the
code but it's not.

I've tried all sorts of things but by now my coding is such a big mess
that I'd rather not share it as it would probably only confuse matters.

Anybody have any ideas?

Kim Jensen

[rich]

Can you just include the txt file in your profile.php? Something like:

$file = "/path/to/file/" . $name . ".txt";
require($file);

[Kim Jensen]

rich wrote:

Can you just include the txt file in your profile.php? Something like:

$file = "/path/to/file/" . $name . ".txt";
require($file);

As far as I can see that includes the entire .txt file in the .php page.
I "only" need it to extract the information in the arrays in the .txt
file and sometimes not even all of the arrays. I have two .php files
that extract different (and in some cases some of the same) information
from the .txt file.

Kim Jensen

[rich]

Ah I didn't realize that would be a problem. The only thing I can
think of, and this is a TOTAL guess, but

Open file
while reading file
if the line starts with a var that i want ($name)
eval() the line

[rich]

Got it. I made the below just check the first 3 chars of a line... you
can change it to check the line however..

Text file contains:

$foo = "bar";

php file has:

$file = "file.txt";
$fp = fopen($file, "r");
while (!feof($fp)) {
$line = fgets($fp, 1024);
$FirstThree = substr($line, 0, 3);
if ($FirstThree == "\$fo") {
eval($line);
echo $foo;
}
}

The above returns "bar"

[Kim Jensen]

rich wrote:

Got it. I made the below just check the first 3 chars of a line... you
can change it to check the line however..
Seems to be working. I don't understand the need for the line-checking
though. Shouldn't it be possible to just ask it to get the $foo-array
once the file has been opened?

Kim Jensen
Text file contains:

$foo = "bar";

php file has:

$file = "file.txt";
$fp = fopen($file, "r");
while (!feof($fp)) {
$line = fgets($fp, 1024);
$FirstThree = substr($line, 0, 3);
if ($FirstThree == "\$fo") {
eval($line);
echo $foo;
}
}

The above returns "bar"

[Jerry Stuckle]

Kim Jensen wrote:

rich wrote:

Got it. I made the below just check the first 3 chars of a line... you
can change it to check the line however..

Seems to be working. I don't understand the need for the line-checking
though. Shouldn't it be possible to just ask it to get the $foo-array
once the file has been opened?

Kim Jensen

Text file contains:

$foo = "bar";

php file has:

$file = "file.txt";
$fp = fopen($file, "r");
while (!feof($fp)) {
$line = fgets($fp, 1024);
$FirstThree = substr($line, 0, 3);
if ($FirstThree == "\$fo") {
eval($line);
echo $foo;
}
}

The above returns "bar"

Kim,

Opening a file does not process it - all it is is a bunch of text. So
foo-array doesn't exist. Rich is correct - you need to eval() the lines
to make it work.

However, I think this would be a lot easier with a database!

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Kim Jensen]

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

Opening a file does not process it - all it is is a bunch of text. So
foo-array doesn't exist. Rich is correct - you need to eval() the lines
to make it work.
Ok. I get it.
However, I think this would be a lot easier with a database!

Probably. It's just that I have thousands of files and turning them into
a database would probably take me forever as I don't know of any easy
ways of doing so.

Kim Jensen

[Jerry Stuckle]

Kim Jensen wrote:

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

Opening a file does not process it - all it is is a bunch of text. So
foo-array doesn't exist. Rich is correct - you need to eval() the
lines to make it work.

Ok. I get it.

However, I think this would be a lot easier with a database!

Probably. It's just that I have thousands of files and turning them into
a database would probably take me forever as I don't know of any easy
ways of doing so.

Kim Jensen

Kim,

Yep, it is a chore. But next year you'll have even more files to
convert. And you'll still be spending time manually keying things like
this in, checking for errors, etc.

A database can really help. Perhaps you can automate the processing of
the files with a program?

--
=============== ===
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
js*******@attgl obal.net
=============== ===

[Kim Jensen]

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

Yep, it is a chore. But next year you'll have even more files to
convert. And you'll still be spending time manually keying things like
this in, checking for errors, etc.
I know. However I have next to no experience with working on databases
but know a bit of php so for now doing it like this seems easier. Right
now my main .php script looks like this:

-----
if ($_GET["name"]) {
$lines = explode("\n",fi le_get_contents ("Who/" .
strtolower($_GE T["name"]) . ".txt"));

foreach ($lines as $item) {
if ($item != "") {
$parts = explode("=",tri m($item),2);
$item_vars[$parts[0]] = $parts[1];
}
}
-----

and then I retrieve the information using stuff like

echo $item_vars["occupation "]
echo $item_vars["occupation 2"]

from a file that has:

occupation=Poli ce officer
occupation2=Tea cher

The code end up looking like shit when I have to add for instance up to
echo $item_vars["occupation 20"] so I was looking for an easier way to do
it, so that I didn't have to make sure the .php page always had as many
echo's as the .txt pages had $item_vars

I know a database would probably be the best way to get things organized
but until I figure out how to configure one for what I need I just
wanted to clean up my php.
A database can really help. Perhaps you can automate the processing of
the files with a program?

Do you know of any programs that can do that or know where I can look
for some? Considering everything is in .txt files at the moment I would
guess it would be easy turning them files into something that could
easily be converted after a couple of search/replaces or something.

Kim Jensen