'PHP/Laravel - find and read 'key-value pair' from file

I want to store some text informations but I don't want to use database for this. For example there is a file:

key1: some text information 1
key2: some text information 2
key3: another text information

I was wondering, what is the shortest way to find one specific value form this file using PHP or Laravel?

I could use foreach(file('yourfile.txt') as $line) {} loop to store text lines into array and then find the line with specific key, but maybe there is shorter or nicer way to do this.

phplaravelkey-valuefile-read


Solution 1:[1]

I think you should use array instead text file

Create a new file in the app/config directory. Let's call it constants.php

In there you have to return an array of config values.

return [
    'myData' => [
        'key1' => 'www.domain.es',
        'key2' => 'www.domain.us'
        // etc
    ]
];

And you can access them as follows

Config::get('constants.myData');
// or if you want a specific one
Config::get('constants.myData.key1');

And you can set them as well

Config::set('myData.key1', 'test 123');

Solution 2:[2]

@leuans answer was the basis for the following function which works better for me since it also strips newlines and makes the separator configurable.

// https://stackoverflow.com/a/27917087/1497139
// getConfig('yourfile.txt','separator') returns an associative array
// example: getConfig('config.ini',': ')
function getConfig($file,$separator) {
    $data = file($file);
    $returnArray = array();
    foreach($data as $line) {
        $parts=explode($separator, $line);
        $name=trim($parts[0]);
        $value=trim($parts[1]);
        $returnArray[$name] = $value;
    }
    return $returnArray;
}

Solution 3:[3]

@leuans answer is nice but this slight modification is better by:

  • allowing to be have the separator character inside the value
  • trimming whitespace
  • ignoring blank lines
    function getData($file, $separator=":") {
        $data = file($file);
        $returnArray = array();
        foreach($data as $line) {
            $line = trim($line);
            $spos = mb_strpos($line, $separator);
            if($spos !== false){
                $key = trim(mb_substr($line, 0, $spos));
                $value = trim(mb_substr($line, $spos+mb_strlen($separator)));
                $returnArray[$key] = $value;
            }
        }
    
        return $returnArray;
    }

Solution 4:[4]

You can use the function parse_ini_file

It reads a file of name/value pairs into an array so they can be easily accessed, e.g:

$ini = parse_ini_file("data.ini");
$value = $ini['key1'];

data.ini can look like this:

; This is a comment
key1=value1

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 kamlesh.bar
Solution 2 Wolfgang Fahl
Solution 3 user151496
Solution 4 Packs

Related Questions