PHP and CSV flat files!

Malcolm · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:18 pm

Yesterday Phate PM'd me asking for a small script that would count the amount of times a user downloaded a music file. Now most people would respond with a mySQL solution; this is all well and good but mySQL connections and queries can be a huge hog on resources and response times. Why not just use a file to store these values?

Initially I sent him off a simple script that would create a new text file for each mp3 file that he had in the directory. After sleeping a few hours I came to the conclusion that the solution sucked

This is my new solution using a comma separated value (CSV) flat file database.

Code:

<?php
//Initilized Vars
$file_types = array( 'mp3' , 'ogg' );   //accepted extensions
$dir = "music";            // directory
$count_csv = "counter.csv";       // flat-file database (comma separated values)
$file_count = array();          // the output

//var with the major stuff in it
$listing = array_output(csv_extract(), dir_read($file_types));

//Functions
function csv_extract($csv = "counter.csv")
{
   $return = array();
   if(!is_file($csv)){
      touch($csv);
   }
   $fh = fopen($csv, "r");
   while (!feof($fh)) {
      $output = explode(",", fgets($fh, 4096));
      if($output[0] !== "" && $output[1] !== ""){
         $return[$output[0]] = trim($output[1]);
      }
   }
   fclose($fh);
   return $return;
}

function csv_inject($file, $input = array(), $csv = "counter.csv")
{
   $output = "";
   $cr = "\n";
   $input[$file]++;
   foreach($input as $key => $val){
      if($key !== "" && $val !== ""){
         $output .= trim($key) . "," . trim($val) . $cr;
      }
   }
   $output = preg_replace("#(.*)\n$#", "\$1", $output);
   $fh = fopen($csv, "w");
   fwrite($fh, $output);
   fclose($fh);
}

function dir_read($types = array('mp3'), $dir = "music")
{
   $return = array();
   if (is_dir($dir)) {
      if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
         while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
            $ext = preg_replace("#(.*)\.([a-z0-9]{3})$#", "\$2", strtolower($file));
            if(array_search( $ext, $types) !== FALSE){
               $return[$file] = 0;
            }
         }
         closedir($dh);
      }
   }
   return $return;
}

function array_output($from_csv = array(), $return = array())
{
   foreach($return as $key => $val){
      $return[$key] = $from_csv[$key];
   }
   return $return;
}

//Page output
if(isset($_GET['download'])){
   if(1===1){
      echo '<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1;url='.$dir."/".$_GET['download'].'">';
      csv_inject($_GET['download'], $listing);
   }
}else{
   foreach($listing as $key => $val){
      echo "<a target='_blank' href='?download=".$key."'>".$key."</a> | Downloaded ".$val." times<br />";
   }
}
?>

Functions explanations will be covered in the reply posts below

Malcolm · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:33 pm

Code:

function csv_extract($csv = "counter.csv")
{
   $return = array();
   if(!is_file($csv)){
      touch($csv);
   }
   $fh = fopen($csv, "r");
   while (!feof($fh)) {
      $output = explode(",", fgets($fh, 4096));
      if($output[0] !== "" && $output[1] !== ""){
         $return[$output[0]] = trim($output[1]);
      }
   }
   fclose($fh);
   return $return;
}

This function opens the csv flat file and dumps the variables into an array. This function will only work where ther are 2 value for each entry. EG: in this script we have a filename and a number.

Code:

function csv_inject($file, $input = array(), $csv = "counter.csv")
{
   $output = "";
   $cr = "\n";
   $input[$file]++;
   foreach($input as $key => $val){
      if($key !== "" && $val !== ""){
         $output .= trim($key) . "," . trim($val) . $cr;
      }
   }
   $output = preg_replace("#(.*)\n$#", "\$1", $output);
   $fh = fopen($csv, "w");
   fwrite($fh, $output);
   fclose($fh);
}

This function is called when a file is downloaded. The file currently being downloaded is $file and its count value gets incremented.
Next we go through the array, making sure we aren't writing empty array elements to the flat file.
We "trim" the white space off the values, then make a new line for the next element.
the preg_replace statement is removing the last new line from the file, then we write out the info to the file.

Code:

function dir_read($types = array('mp3'), $dir = "music")
{
   $return = array();
   if (is_dir($dir)) {
      if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
         while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
            $ext = preg_replace("#(.*)\.([a-z0-9]{3})$#", "\$2", strtolower($file));
            if(array_search( $ext, $types) !== FALSE){
               $return[$file] = 0;
            }
         }
         closedir($dh);
      }
   }
   return $return;
}

This function reads the content of a directory, gets the extension of the files (using the preg_replace statement), check to see if out extension is listed in the allowed extensions array. If the file meets our conditions its written to the directory listing array, with a value of 0 (funky but explained later).

Code:

function array_output($from_csv = array(), $return = array())
{
   foreach($return as $key => $val){
      $return[$key] = $from_csv[$key];
   }
   return $return;
}

This function merges the arrays we got from the csv_extract and dir_read functions.
Basically we go through the dir list and replace its count value for the one we got from the csv file. Whats why in the dir_read function we assigned 0 to the array elements.

Code:

//Page output
if(isset($_GET['download'])){
   if(1===1){
      echo '<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1;url='.$dir."/".$_GET['download'].'">';
      csv_inject($_GET['download'], $listing);
   }
}else{
   foreach($listing as $key => $val){
      echo "<a target='_blank' href='?download=".$key."'>".$key."</a> | Downloaded ".$val." times<br />";
   }
}

This, amazingly enough, is the output. I expect that any user would change the looks.

Hope this is helpful to anyone wanting a non-sql solution for a small script.

Phate · **Posted:** Sat Jan 15, 2005 9:27 pm

Thanks man! im on my way to test it out!

EDIT_____

Works great!

here it is in action... so far
Im still going to tweak it a little, but the code works great!

http://thefury.zbrooks.com/songs.php

PHP and CSV flat files!

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