Tab delimited file into Array Structure

[michaelham]

I have a tab delimited file that I will be using to update a database.  The file has the column names in the first row and the records following.  Is there a way I can retrieve the records into an array and access it similar to the way mysql_fetch_array does it.  For example My file looks like this

 

LastName<tab>FirstName<tab>PhoneNumber<tab>ZipCode

Smith<tab>Bob<tab>5555555<tab>11212

Thomas<tab>James<tab>6562432<tab>11929

 

I would like to be able to loop through one record at a time and reference the array like this

while($row = NEXT RECORD SOME HOW)

{

  echo "<br />Last Name = " . $row['LastName'] . " FirstName = " . $row['FirstName'];

}

 

and have it display

 

Last Name = Smith First Name = Bob

Last Name = Thomas First Name = James

 

Any ideas?  I would like to be able to do this because my actual files each have about 216 columns and that one is for a small table and the primary key is somewhere in the middle but is always called ListingNumber and the location changes depending on which table it refers to.

[gevans]

<?php
$lines = file('your-file');
foreach($lines as $line_number => $line)
{
$details = explode("<tab>", $line);
echo "<pre>",var_dump($details),"</pre>
}
?>

 

Have a play with that. Just get your file name in place and see what gets printed from var_dump.

[patrickmvi]

Your explode statement would be explode("\t", $line) instead of explode("<tab>", $line).

[michaelham]

I am getting the file read in with that but it is still indexing each record with 0,1,2,3,4,5 instead of the column names.

[gevans]

Could you give me an example of your output, I don't fully understand

[roopurt18]

You're better off leaving the rows numerically indexed; otherwise you'll have to loop over the columns in a row more than once.

 

When you say update a database, do you mean you are inserting or are you inserting and updating duplicate records?

 

Also, which database are you talking about here?  Many databases provide a way to bulk insert records.  In that case it's often easier to bulk insert into a temporary table and then perform the updates with a couple of SQL statements rather than writing a PHP script.

[michaelham]

I have figure out a way to get ahold of the index I am looking for during the first iteration.  Then I can always access the value I need.

 

The script will actually be doing both inserting new record and updating old (by deleting the old record and reinserting with the new/updated record).  I have this working but I now have a different issue, but it isn't related to this so I will open a new thread.  Please look for it, called PHP CLI Problem.  Thanks

 

Thanks everybody for your help