Looking for some help parsing a flat file.

[Failing_Solutions]

I have a flat file that which is in this format like this

 

1038140, Hail of Arrows, 1, Long, Wenchratt, 25
1038144, Razorfoot Griffin, 1, Very Long, Pezfreak, 5
1038145, Razorfoot Griffin, 1, Very Long, Pezfreak, 5
1038150, Samite Healer, 1, Very Long, Pezfreak, 8
1038152, White Knight, 1, Very Long, Pezfreak, 7
1038153, White Knight, 1, Very Long, Pezfreak, 7
1038154, Boggart Harbinger, 1, Long, Pezfreak, 14
1038159, Rancor, 2, Long, Pezfreak, 12
1038163, Scattershot Archer, 1, Very Long, Pezfreak, 6
1038166, Angelic Avatar, 1, Long, Grunfell, 180

 

And I'm trying to parse this data so it can be inserted into my database which is basically the same format except I have 2 extra columns

Here are the columns

ID---Card_Name--Amount--Duration--Seller--Cost--"Price_Per"--"Date_Found"

 

The column Price_Per is the Cost/Amount and the date is pretty simple the date.

 

I have for the last 6 months just been taking this flat file putting it Excel and then text to columns it and add the other 2 columns of data.

It only takes a few minutes but I'd like to have a way to do on my site with a form upload, parse and insert the data.

 

I have done a lot with php but by no means am I anywhere near an expert and never used the file functions to any great degree.

 

I'm thinking I need to put this in an array somehow.. explode it on the " , " then somehow add in the Price_Per function and just add the CURRENT_TIMESTAMP into the sql insert which I must loop through each line?

 

Little baffled here so any help on dealing with inserting data, tips examples anything would be helpful.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Barand]

check out fgetcsv() function

[Failing_Solutions]

Ahh now that looks like a what I'm after.

 

Going to do some test.

 

Thank you Barand

 

 

 

 

[Failing_Solutions]

Humm,

 

So in this I ran into another issue..

 

One of my cards has a comma in the name so I needed to strip that out first.

 

So I figured this would do it..

	$replace = fopen("trades.dat", 'w+');
str_replace("Eladamri, Lord of Leaves","Eladamri Lord of Leaves",'$replace');
fclose('trades.dat');

 

What actually happened was the file was dumped.

 

Any suggestions on this one?

[kicken]

Can you re-generate the csv file so it's in a proper format?  If you have fields that have a comma in them they should be surrounded by quotes so that when the file is parsed the comma is treated as part of the string rather than as a field separator.

 

Otherwise you can fix it by using file_get_contents, str_replace then file_put_contents.

 

[Failing_Solutions]

Unfortunately I have no control over the output of the flat file its from a 3rd party source.

 

I've been working on using this function to do a replace...

$str=implode("\n",file('trades.dat'));
$fp=fopen('trades.dat','a');
//replace something in the file string
$str=str_replace('Eladamri, Lord of Leaves','Eladamri Lord of Leaves',$str);
//now, rewrite the file
fwrite($fp,$str);
print_r($str);
fclose($fp);

 

Which works, but if I refresh the page it actually duplicates the data... still working on this.