Flat-File Databases and PHP

[Sabre]

I would preffer to use mysql for my databases, but the server I'm on only allows me to use 5 of them, so I'm also going to need to use flat-file databases.

I was wondering if anyone knows any good tutorials or code examples concerning this topic?

[aspen]

With a few functions you can easily read from a flat file database.

file() takes one parameter (the file location) and will read each line in a file into a new array element

$array = file("$url");

$array[0] = row1
$array[1] = row2

and so on

Next you'll want to split up each row into it's components.

To do this use the explode function.

$array= explode("|",$element);

So here is what your script would look like that reads from your database: If your row's look like this:

Chris|Male|Brown|Brown

$url = "http://www.domain.com/path/to/file/";
$main_array = file("$url");

function chop_up($element){
    $row_array = explode("|",$element);
    $name = $row_array[0];
    $sex = $row_array[1];
    $hair_color = $row_array[2];
    $eye_color = $row_array[3];
}

array_walk($main_array, 'chop_up');
//This Array Walk function will execute the function 'chop_up' once for each element in the array 

Of course once you get your data out you can sort it and print it and all of that good stuff.


On a side note there is no limit to how many tables you can have in one db, so why not simply combine 2 dbs?

[johnn]

Hi,
The url below has some related info:
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/...x2a_page3.html

As Aspen wrote, does that mean we can have 2 or more applications, or 2 or more different websites using the same database? That's great, but what are the security problems encountered?

Johns

[aspen]

As long as they are on the same server it makes no difference. They could even be on different servers and it'd work fine.

When accessing a database MySQL doesn't care at all where the request is coming from, what it cares about is the username and password used. So a site about cats and a site about dogs can use the same database if they wanted to. Doesn't make much of a difference.