Extracting data from a flat file & displaying on website

I am using a shopping cart called PPCal (shoppingcart.org) that is perl/cgi based and uses a flat file database. It comes with its own shop front, but also you can intergrate its add to cart & view cart buttons into your site, but I also want to get other stuff displayed such as total items per catorgory or if the item is sold. Does anyone know if its possible & if so, how?
Thanks in advance.

 

I've not worked with the shopping cart you've mentioned, so I won't be able to suggest you a solution straight away. However, going by the details you've provided (which are very inadequate to give a solution!) it seems that what you want, is possible. However, you have to post more specific questions along with the relevant code if anyone is to help you out in forums. Try to understand the working of the shopping cart application and the structure in which the data is stored in the flat files. And then post the relevant parts which can then be analysed by the experts here to help you. I don't think anyone who has not worked with that particular app can devote the time required to analyse the app for you.

So you've got to give the leads for us to work on your issue.

 

Hi, thanks for replying and hopefully I have the info you need, although there maybe a better code that will be more suitable for this problem like php. I am trying to get some php code or other code to count certain values in a text file and display them on a webpage. The text file is for a shopping cart and stores item details such as what catogory the item is in (1st coloum).

1|halffrag|1|8001|9004|HalfFrag|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
2|FullFrag|1|8001|9005|FullFrag|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
3|DoubleFrag|1|8001|9006|DoubleFrag|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
4|Colony|1|8001|9007|Colony|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,
1|Colony|1|8001|9007|Colony|10.00||1|||1|||||.00||.00|||1,

One of my requirments is to display on my home page the number of items in a catogory. The value can be seen in the first coloum, therefore currently there is 1 item in each of the 4 catogories and 2 item in cat "1". Therefore is it possible to display on the front page the number of items in catogoy "1"? and then i can alter for 2, 3, 4, etc

Therefore there are 2 items in catogory "1"

Thanks in advance,

 

problem solved...

PHP:

<?php
    function get_item_count($file_path, $category){
        $count = 0;
        //open file
        $f = fopen($file_path, "r");
        //read next line
        while($line = fgets($f)){
            //break up line into columns
              $columns = explode('|', $line);
              //check for category value
              if(trim($columns[0])==$category){
                $count++;
              }
        }
        //close file
        fclose($f);
        //return count
        return $count;
  }
  
  print(get_item_count('data.txt', '2'));
?>

 

origianlly I thought it was a perl problem, but it evolved into a PHP problem & solution )