Reading tab and newline delimited (multi-dimensional) flat-file database

Question

Apologies if this may be a simple question, I haven't worked with flat file databases before and finding this pretty non-intuitive.

I have a flat file, tab \t and \n new line delimited database as such:

Sebastian Ingrosso  Kidsos (Wippenberg Mix) 2F32829628  Electro
Avicii  Silhouettes 2F47987574 House

(two rows just for sample). I want to be able to iterate through each line, encapsulate each element delimited by a \t tab character inside a span tag and then move on to the next line, preferable encapsulating each new line in a <li> element.

I have this to start with, which doesn't add spans or li's:

function display_tracklist($max) {
$db = fopen('db/db.txt', 'r');
$row = 0;
while (($tracks = fgetcsv($db, "\n")) !== FALSE) {
    if ($max > count($tracks)) {
        $max = count($tracks);
    }
    $row++;
    for ($index=0; $index < $max; $index++) {
        echo "<li>" . $tracks[$index] . "</li>";
    }
}
fclose($db);

}

What is the best way to handle this task? Normally I would have done this with a SQL database making things a lot more intuitive but that's not an option here. I've thought of nested foreach loops, etc. no luck so far.

End result should be: <li>Sebastian Ingrosso Kidsos (Wippenberg Mix) 2F32829628 Electro</li> <li>Avicii Silhouettes 2F32829628 House</li>

etc.

[fget_csv](http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php) won't work for you? — Matt, Feb 15 '13 at 21:59
I guess this does a similar thing as what I did using `expode`, could do another loop to deal with the second dimension. — wnajar, Feb 15 '13 at 22:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 15 '13 at 22:36

Assuming your data is alike my $data, that looks like giving what you want;

$data = "Sebastian\tIngrosso\tKidsos (Wippenberg Mix)\t2F32829628\tElectro\nAvicii\tSilhouettes\t2F47987574\tHouse";
foreach ((array) explode("\n", $data) as $lines) {
    print "<li>";
    foreach ((array) explode("\t", $lines) as $line) {
        print "<span>{$line}</span>";
    }
    print "</li>\n";
}

Output;

<li><span>Sebastian</span><span>Ingrosso</span><span>Kidsos (Wippenberg Mix)</span><span>2F32829628</span><span>Electro</span></li>
<li><span>Avicii</span><span>Silhouettes</span><span>2F47987574</span><span>House</span></li>

nice, simpler than the way I ended up figuring out – wnajar Feb 16 '13 at 03:36 — wnajar, Feb 16 '13 at 03:36

Reading tab and newline delimited (multi-dimensional) flat-file database

1 Answers1