Question

I need to update some static site data periodically, so i am thinking of keeping it in a format easily and readily available on the server.

I am thinking of creating a php file that can be included in the code, so preparing the data gets separate from the browser requests.

i fetch the data from the db, so i have an array right now in key value format.

now i want to create a php file, that just defines that array.

the key and value will be string based values, and the data is in swedish.

is there a way to directly dump the array to a file, and then just include the file without any preprocessing. I want the file in the following output :

$array = array ();
$array ["key"] = "value";
$array ["key"] = "value";
$array ["key"] = "value";
$array ["key"] = "value";

Answer 1

I would also recommend looking at var_export as you won’t have to serialize and encode to use it.

For example (untested):

<?php
$array = array('key' => 'v');
$exported = var_export($array, TRUE);
file_put_contents('/path/to/file', '<?php $var = ' . $exported . '; ?>');
?>

and then you can read it back in via:

<?php
include '/path/to/file';
// and now you have access to $var
// of course you may want to change the name of the $var variable as it
// will be brought into global scope (and might conflict)
?>