Question

I have a file that contains 100 highscores for a game I’m scripting.

1.2345, name1
1.3456, name2
1.4567, name3

for example.

With php, I need to get the content of the line nameX appears on so I can overwrite it if the new score is higher than the old score. Also I need to find out which line number nameX appears on so they know what place (ranking) they are in.

Which php functions should I look into so that I can make this work?

Answer 1

You can either use fopen and fread or file for this one. Personally, I would opt for file as it sounds like this is a fairly small file to begin with.

$row = -1;
$fl = file( '/path/to/file' );

if( $fl )
{
    foreach( $fl as $i => $line )
    {
        // break the line in two. This can also be done through subst, but when 
        // the contents of the string are this simple, explode works just fine.
        $pieces = explode( ", ", $line );
        if( $pieces[ 1 ] == $name ) 
        {
            $row = $i;
            break;
        }
    }
    // $row is now the index of the row that the user is on.
    // or it is -1.
}
else
{
    // do something to handle inability to read file.
} 

For good measure, the fopen approach:

// create the file resource (or return false)
$fl = fopen( '/path/to/file', 'r' );
if( !$fl ) echo 'error'; /* handle error */

$row = -1;
// reads the file line by line.
while( $line = fread( $fl ) )
{
    // recognize this?
    $pieces = explode( ", ", $line );
    if( $pieces[ 1 ] == $name ) 
    {
        // ftell returns the current line number.
        $row = ftell( $fl );
        break;
    }
}
// yada yada yada