php retrieve data from text file

Question

Imagine I have a certain text file like this:

 Welcome to the text file!
 -------------------------
 Description1: value1
 Description2: value2
 Description containing spaces: value containing spaces
 Description3: value3

Storing this data into a text file would be easy, like this:

 $file = 'data/preciousdata.txt';
 // The new data to add to the file
 $put = $somedescription .": ". $somevalue;
 // Write the contents to the file, 
 file_put_contents($file, $put, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX);

With a different description and value every time I write to it.

Now I would like to read the data, so you would get the file:

 $myFile = "data/preciousdata.txt";
 $lines = file($myFile);//file in to an array

Lets say I just wrote "color: blue" and "taste: spicy" to my text file. I don't know on which lines they are, and I want to retrieve the value of the "color:" description.

Edit Should I let php "search" though the file, return the number of the line that contains the "description", then put the line in a string and remove everything for the ":"?

Something like ready line by line and then remove all the chars before the ":"? — Aurelio De Rosa, Jun 30 '13 at 15:31
You could easily use the regex from my earlier [answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/17297209). — HamZa, Jun 30 '13 at 15:33
use JSON. json_encode and json_decode instead of writing your own parser. Other options are serialize and XML — Pinoniq, Jun 30 '13 at 15:33

Ivanka Todorova · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-30T15:40:55.787

8

With explode you can make an array containg the "description" as a key and the "value" as value.

$myFile = "data.txt";
$lines = file($myFile);//file in to an array
var_dump($lines);

unset($lines[0]);
unset($lines[1]); // we do not need these lines.

foreach($lines as $line) 
{
    $var = explode(':', $line, 2);
    $arr[$var[0]] = $var[1];
}

print_r($arr);

edited Jun 30 '13 at 15:40

answered Jun 30 '13 at 15:34

Ivanka Todorova

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2

You can also trim like this: $arr[$var[0]] = trim($var[1]); – Aurelio De Rosa Jun 30 '13 at 15:36
@AurelioDeRosa this is a good advice. Now he can do whatever he wants. $var[0] is the "Description1", "Descrption2" (etc...) and $var[1] holds the value. :) – Ivanka Todorova Jun 30 '13 at 15:38
4

Use the limit argument of explode (`$var = explode(':', $line, 2);`) – Sumurai8 Jun 30 '13 at 15:39

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 30 '13 at 15:39

I don't know how you want to use those values later on. You can load data into an associative array, where the descriptions are keys:

// iterate through array
foreach($lines as $row) {
    // check if the format of this row is correct
    if(preg_match('/^([^:]*): (.*)$/', $row, $matches)) {
        // get matched data - key and value
        $data[$matches[1]] = $matches[2];
    }
}
var_dump($data);

Please note that this code allows you to fetch values with colons.

If you are not sure if the descriptions are unique you can store values as an array:

// iterate through array
foreach($lines as $row) {
    // check if the format of this row is correct
    if(preg_match('/^([^:]*): (.*)$/', $row, $matches)) {
        // get matched data - key and value
        $data[$matches[1]][] = $matches[2];
    }
}
var_dump($data);

This prevents from overwriting data parsed earlier.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 30 '13 at 15:36

Since $lines is an array, you should loop it looking for the ":" and separating the line in two: description and value.

Then:

<?php
$variables = array();
unset($lines[0]); //Description line
unset($lines[1]); //-------

foreach ($lines as $line) {
    $tempArray = explode( ": ", $line ); //Note the space after the ":", because
                                           values are stored with this format.
    $variables[$tempArray[0]] = $tempArray[1];
}
?>

There you have in variables an array, whose keys are the descriptions and values are your values.

andre.barata · Answer 4 · 2013-06-30T15:48:28.363

You could use a regular expression to split the line and retrieve the parte after ":" or just yse the explodecommand which returns an array of the string split by every ":" such as:

foreach ($lines as $line_num => $line) {
    $split_line = explode(":", $line);
    // echo the sencond part of thr string after the first ":"
    echo($split_line[1])
    // also remove spaces arounfd your string
    echo(trim($split_line[1]));
}

php retrieve data from text file

4 Answers4