PHP 5 in Practice

15. Other Data Storage Methods For large, interrelated datasets that need to be accessible by many different sources, databases are a fine solution. However, more often than not, applications only use information that is not very extensive, ...

15.1. Creating and Reading CSV files Comma-separated values (CSV) is a common file format used for transferring data between two different systems. Most all spreadsheet software as well as database clients allow for data to be imported or exported...

15.2. Using Custom Text Files for Storage Most of the time if you need to store data in plain text files, CSV is the easiest method to use. However there will be times that, for whatever reason, a special format is required. For example, you might...

15.3. Accessing and Updating DBM-Style Databases DBM (or Berkeley DB) style databases have been in existence for a long time. They are locally stored files that contain data for you in an easy to access manner. They are not, however, relational da...

15.4. Storing Data Via Serialize and Unserialize PHP has a set of functions, serialize() and unserialize(), that convert a PHP variable into a storable (text) format and convert it back again. These functions are often used to store variables into...

15.5. Automatically Creating and Updating PHP Include Files There are times when you have some configuration data that your script needs to access, and the easiest way to store and use that is of course to just place it in a PHP file and include i...