PHP Programming, or Perl or whatever

Hi. I have no idea how to program in PHP or Perl, but I hope you can help. Is there a way to save a file on a server (like a text file) using PHP or Perl and then retrive that data from the server (for example like creating a poll - you save the number of answers for each question and then retrive the data to show the results). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if you know the answer to above question, the second part would be: how do you read the file from the server line by line (if it's even possible) and store that data in an array?

Thanks
Spike

Why don't you learn a little about PHP or Perl first. We could help you better that way.

First of all I know that much :)

Second I don't have really have time to do much research on PHP or Perl at this moment. School is killing me, my boss just wants the job done (using PHP or Perl - bastard) and I already sleep 3 hours a night

Thanks anyway

Spike

your best bet would to be to save the data in a database, being a flat file or Mysql

mySQL is easy but probably too powerful for a poll...

Perl example:

Code:

---

$file = "poll.txt";
$input = "this is my result";

#create a file and add to it,  INPUTPOLL is the file handler this can be any name you like
open (INPUTPOLL, "> $file) or die "can't  open file for input";
  print INPUTPOLL $input;
close INPUTPOLL;

#open the file and read the contents
open (OUTPUTPOLL, "< $file") or die "can't open file for output";
  $poll_results = <OUTPUTPOLL>;
close OUTPUTPOLL;

#display in browser
print"Content-Type: text/html\n\n";
print $poll_results;

---

some things you should know about opening files:

if you notice in the open line there is a > or a <
> means create or overwrite
>> (not used above) means create, and append
< means open file for readiing

You can not open a file for writing and reading at the same time!!

This should get u started!

PHP Code:

---

     $fp = @fopen("poll.txt", "r");
         fpassthru ($fp);
     @fclose ($fp); 


---

Opening and displaying file poll.txt in PHP

You can open for write and read access at the same time! ;)

Quote:

---

Originally posted by da_silvy
mySQL is easy but probably too powerful for a poll...

---

oh I don't know about that, it's what I use

for a noob

i think he should learn text files, then databases. ;)

Quote:

---

for a noob

I think he should learn text files, then databases.

---

I second that, although something as simple as a poll would be a good stepping stone to a DB from a flat file system ( for a learning project in the future ).

Both have there advantages working with flat files you tend to pick up a lot of pattern matching skills, and working with databases, well, you pick up SQL skills!

IMHO: for such a simple project as a poll it's more time efficient to write a script for a flat file than a DB!

In Perl, you could use a DBM file (or emulation) to bind a hash to a file.

Perl doesn't really take that long. I would suggest finding some tutorials. Reading and writing files are one of the first things that are probably covered.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by progressive


I second that, although something as simple as a poll would be a good stepping stone to a DB from a flat file system ( for a learning project in the future ).

Both have there advantages working with flat files you tend to pick up a lot of pattern matching skills, and working with databases, well, you pick up SQL skills!

IMHO: for such a simple project as a poll it's more time efficient to write a script for a flat file than a DB!

---

I would have to agree too, but I passed the flat file up and went to mysql when I learned. I think the flat file is hard to learn for me that is. but everybody has their choice. :)

Yeah...

I think database is more convenient.

IMHO: PHP is better than perl too :p


I just like it more...

I haven't put much effort into learning perl, but PHP is pretty easy to pick up ;)