Question

I want the following functionality using php

I have a csv file. Each file corresponds to a row in my database

There is a html form that will allow me to choose the csv file.

Then once the form is submitted, I must parse the csv file and insert data into the db accordingly

How do I go about doing this ?

Answer 1

Reading a CSV file can generally be done using the fgetcsv function (depending on your kind of CSV file, you might have to specify the delimiter, separator, … as parameters)

Which means that going through you file line by line would not be much harder than something like this :

$f = fopen('/path/to/file', 'r');
if ($f) {
    while ($line = fgetcsv($f)) {  // You might need to specify more parameters
        // deal with $line.
        // $line[0] is the first column of the file
        // $line[1] is the second column
        // ...
    }
    fclose($f);
} else {
    // error
}

(Not tested, but example given on the manual page of fgetcsv should help you get started)

Of course, you’ll have to get the correct path to the uploaded file — see the $_FILE superglobal, and the section on Handling file uploads, for more informations about that.

And, to save the data into your database, you’ll have to use the API which suits your DB engine — if using MySQL, you should use either :

• mysqli
  • Note that you should prefer mysqli, instead of the old mysql extension (which doesn’t support features added in MySQL >= 4.1)
• or PDO