writing to text file - layout messed up - PHP

Question

ive got the following fwrite code, with , separating the data and it ending in ))

$shapeType = $_POST['shapeType'].','.$_POST['triangleSide1'].','.$_POST['triangleSide2']
.','.$_POST['triangleSide3'].','.$_POST['triangleColour'].'))';
fwrite($handle, $shapeType);

but this is how it saves in the text file...

,,,,))Triangle,180,120,80,Red))

why have the first set of

,,,,,))

appeared in front of what it should look like?

Answer 1

You need to add a new line character to the end of each line. Otherwise your lines will all run into each other.

Use PHP_EOL for this as it will automatically use the Operating System appropriate new line character sequence.

PHP_EOL (string)
The correct 'End Of Line' symbol for this platform. Available since PHP 4.3.10 and PHP 5.0.2

$shapeType = $_POST['shapeType'].','.$_POST['triangleSide1'].','.$_POST['triangleSide2']
.','.$_POST['triangleSide3'].','.$_POST['triangleColour'].'))'.PHP_EOL;

FYI, this might be a little cleaner to do using sprintf():

$shapeType = sprintf("%s,%s,%s,%s,%s))%s",
    $_POST['shapeType'],
    $_POST['triangleSide1'],
    $_POST['triangleSide2'],
    $_POST['triangleSide3'],
    $_POST['triangleColour'],
    PHP_EOL
);

Answer 2

Without seeing more of the code I would guess that you post to the same file and you do not check if a POST request was made before you write your file. So probably you write to your file on a GET request as well, causing empty entries to appear.

You would need something like:

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] === 'POST')
{
  // ...
  $shapeType = $_POST['shapeType'].','.$_POST['triangleSide1'].','.$_POST['triangleSide2']
.','.$_POST['triangleSide3'].','.$_POST['triangleColour'].'))';
  fwrite($handle, $shapeType);
  // ...
}

Edit: By the way, you should probably use fputcsv as that takes care of escaping quotes, should you change something in the future that adds for example a description field.