Question

I am a newbie in C++. I am doing a C++ sign up form where I keep all the user datas in a text file named user.txt with formats like

name|password|address|postal|phone

Each user record will occupy one line.

So my first question how can I do this nicely in C++

As for the reading part, my main problem is how to separate the data by splitting “|” then put the records in a user array. So when I do a login function I can loop through the array to match users.

My current code for reading is

string User::readUser(){
    ifstream fin("user.txt");
    string line;
    while(getline(line,fin)){
        string name, password, address; int postal, phone;//put the records into a 2 dimention array
    }
    //return array
}

Answer 1

Check out this answer.

In your case, the fields will be appended to the vector<string> in order, so you can access them directly from it. First position would correspond to the name, second to the password and so on.

Here’s an example:

// The elements should be in this order: name, password, address, postal, phone
vector<string> v = split(line, '|');
string name = v[0], password = v[1], address = v[2];

As for your second question, you could create a structure or class that describes the user:

struct User {

    // Using type string for all fields for convenience.
    string name, password, address, postal, phone;

    User(string n, string pw, string a, string p, string ph): name(n),
                                                              password(pw),
                                                              address(a),
                                                              postal(p),
                                                              phone(ph) {}

};

vector<User> uv;

// ...

// Split string, create user instance and append it to the user list
vector<string> v = split(line, '|');
uv.push_back(User(v[0], v[1], v[2], v[3], v[4]));

To iterate over the User vector:

for (int i = 0; i < uv.size(); ++i) {
    if (uv[i].name == "John") {
        // Process John...
    }
}