Question

Is it possible to validate a text file before I dump its data into a MYSQL database?

I want to check if it contains, say, 5 columns (of data). If so, then i go ahead with the following query:

LOAD DATA CONCURRENT INFILE 'c:/test/test.txt' 
INTO TABLE DUMP_TABLE FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t' ENCLOSED BY '' LINES TERMINATED BY '\n' ignore 1 lines.

If not, I remove the entire row. I repeat this process for all rows in the txt file.

The text file contains data of the format:

id  col2    col3    2012-07-27-19:27:06 col5

id  col2    col3    2012-07-25-09:58:50 col5

id  col2    col3    2012-07-23-10:14:13 col5

Answer 1

EDIT: After reading your comments, here’s the code for doing the same on tab separated data:

$handler = fopen("myfile.txt","r");
$error = false;
while (!feof($handler)){
   fgets($handler,$linetocheck);
   $cols = explode (chr(9), $linetocheck); //edit: using http://es.php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php you can get the same result as with fgets+explode
   if (count($cols)>$max_cols){
       $error=true;
       break;
   }
}
fclose($handler);
if (!$error){
    //...do stuff
}

This code reads a file, let’s say “myfile.txt”, line by line, and sets variable $error to true if any of the lines has a length of more than $max_cols. (My apologies if that’s not what you’re asking, your question is not the most clear to me)

$handler = fopen("myfile.txt","r");
$error = false;
while (!feof($handler)){
   fgets($handler,$linetocheck);
   if (strlen($linetocheck)>$max_cols){
       $error=true;
       break;
   }
}
fclose($handler);
if (!$error){
    //...do stuff
}