Question

As you can see below I am pulling information from a database and writting it to a text file in a structured format (Thanks to everyone who has helped me out).

// Query the database for data
$query = "SELECT cards.card_id,title,description,meta_description,seo_keywords,price FROM cards,card_cheapest WHERE cards.card_id = card_cheapest.card_id ORDER BY card_id";
$result = mysql_query($query);

$result = mysql_query($query);

// Open file for writing
$myFile = "googleproducts.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");

// Loop through returned data and write (append) directly to file
fprintf($fh, "%-10s %-50s  %-450s   %-50s %-300s\n", "id", "label","description","price","seo keywords");
fprintf($fh, "\n");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
 fprintf($fh, "%-10s  %-50s  %-450s  %-50s  %-300s\n", $row['card_id'], $row['title'], $row['description'],$row['price'], $row['seo_keywords']);
}

// Close out the file
fclose($fh);
?>

There are a few things that need to be added in it’s separate column that is not in the database. Mainly just bit of text like “bob’s cards” . I was wondering if it is possible to add that into the mix and have it loop through. Or is it just simpler to add it to the database?

Answer 1

You can have MySQL write the data directly to a file using

SELECT cards.card_id
  ,title
  ,description
  ,meta_description
  ,seo_keywords
  ,price 
INTO OUTFILE 'c:/dir/test.txt' FIELDS ESCAPED BY ' ' FIELD ENCLOSED BY '"' 
FROM cards
INNER JOIN card_cheapest ON (cards.card_id = card_cheapest.card_id) 
ORDER BY card_id 

!! Note the use of forward slashes even on Windows !!

And please replace that ugly implicit WHERE join by an explicit INNER JOIN; it will make future alterations to that query much easier to debug.

Links: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/select.html
And for the options to SELECT .. INTO OUTFILE see: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/load-data.html