Question

I’m new to PHP and am trying to parse certain text from a txt file, and then insert the text into a MySQL database. So, let’s get more specific. The file’s format is as such, and it is repeated through the document end. the ellipses represent the previous and next tones.

...

[Tone27]                            
Atone = 707.3                        
Btone = 746.8                        
Btonelength = 3                        
Btonedebounce = 1                    
Description = Fire Department 1                
mp3_Emails = [e-mail],[e-mail],[e-mail]          
amr_Emails = [e-mail],[e-mail]        
alert_command = c:\test.bat                
post_email_command = c:\test2.bat            
radio_frequency = 154.475    
exclude_from = 13:25                        
exclude_to = 13:35                        
exclude_emails = [e-mail],[e-mail]

... 

What I want to do is parse the first items(e.g. ‘[tone27]’) in each “tone block” from the file and insert it into the first field of a NEW row in the db. I then need to evaluate what comes before each line’s ” = “, for instance “Atone,” and insert what comes after that line’s ” = “, for instance “707.3” into a field by that name. so, this row may look like this in the db:

$id | [tone27] | 707.3 |746.8 | 3 | 1 | Fire Department 1 |[e-mail],[e-mail],e...|...

and so on…

i’ve been able to isolate each thing by performing string functions, but am unsure of how to set up a loop that would insert each value properly. Here’s the code I used to isolate them, but it’s not helping at all with actually getting them into the database.

$txt_file    = file_get_contents('config/tones.txt');
$rows        = explode("\n", $txt_file);
foreach($rows as $row => $data)
{   
$row_data = explode(' = ', $data);

if ((isset($row_data[0])) && ($row_data[0] !== " " )){
    $info[$row]['attribute'] = $row_data[0];
    $info_attribute = trim($info[$row]['attribute']);
}
if (isset($row_data[1])){
    $info[$row]['value']         = $row_data[1];
    $info_value = trim($info[$row]['value']);
    //display data
    echo 'Row ' . $row . ' Attribute: ' . $info_attribute . '<br />';
    echo 'Row ' . $row . ' Value: ' . $info_value . '<br />';
} elseif (($info[$row]['attribute']) && (!empty($info_attribute))) {
    echo "<br>";
    echo 'Row ' . $row . ' Attribute: ' . $info_attribute . '<br />';
    continue;
}      

I’M A NOOB, NO DOUBT. I’M LOST. Thanks in advance for your help!!!

****|| EDIT ||****

Thanks for all of the excellent answers! here’s what I’ve resultingly come up with. No queries yet, just a simple dash of the read portion of CRUD, but the code will be the same, only with queries. A big thanks to @leepowers for introducing me to the wonderful parse_ini_file() function.

foreach(parse_ini_file("config/tones.txt", true) as $k => $v){
extract($v, EXTR_SKIP);
echo "<br>";
echo $k . "<br>"; 
foreach($v as $sv => $ssv){ 

    $lcase_sv = strtolower($sv); 
    if (trim($lcase_sv) == 'amr_emails'){ 
        echo "sv: amr_Emails:<br>"; 
        echo "ssv:<br>";
        $eA = explode(',', trim($ssv));
        foreach($eA as $eK => $eV){ 
            echo "email" . filter_var($eK + 1, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT) . ": " . $eV . "<br>"; 
        }
    } elseif (trim($lcase_sv) == 'mp3_emails'){ 
        echo "ssv:<br>";
        $eA = explode(',', trim($ssv));
        foreach($eA as $eK => $eV){
            echo "email" . filter_var($eK + 1, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT) . ": " . $eV . "<br>";
        }
    }else {
        echo "sv: " . $sv .", " . "s: " . $ssv . "<br>"; 
    }
}

}

Answer 1

Use parse_ini_file to load the data structure into an array.

From there you can build and execute SQL statements:

$entries = parse_ini_file("config/tones.txt", true);
foreach ($entries as $section => $fields) {
  extract($fields, EXTR_SKIP);
  $sql = "INSERT INTO mytable (section, atone, btone) VALUES ($section, '$Atone', '$Btone'";
   ....
}

Of course, you’ll need to prepare and escape the SQL statement before executing it.