Writing results of database query to text file with PHP

Question

I have some code that I've written to pull attachments in my posts table of my wordpress site.

The first function pulls down the results, but I cannot get it to write to a text file.

Creation of the file is fine, and I get no errors. And the code is operating, I'm just not getting a log. I want to know what files it is prepping to move.

This is the function in question from my plugin

function getPostsToMove($baseurl){  

    $baseurl = $baseurl.'/%/%/%.%'; 
    $myfile = fopen("/websites/site.dev/wp-content/uploads/newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");

    global $wpdb  ;

    return $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE `guid` not 
    like '$baseurl' and `post_type` = 'attachment' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 1000");

    fwrite($myfile, $baseurl);
    fclose($myfile);
}

What am I missing?

EDIT- I had the order wrong. THose below were right. But apparently I'm not fetching the data from my return. Do I need to turn that into an array?

New code

function getPostsToMove($baseurl){  

$baseurl = $baseurl.'/%/%/%.%'; 
    $myfile = fopen("/websites/site.dev/wp-content/uploads/newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");

    fwrite($myfile, $output);
    fclose($myfile);
    global $wpdb;  
    $output = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE `guid` not 

like '$baseurl' and `post_type` = 'attachment' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 1000");

return $output;

}

return means return... nothing is executed after a return — Zimmi
– Zimmi, Commented Oct 4, 2016 at 22:12
This is just the first function that gathers the files to be moved, how can I write and close the file before the query happens? — April Marshall
– April Marshall, Commented Oct 4, 2016 at 22:36
For the record, I tried it, just to be sure. It did not write anything. But the plugin worked. — April Marshall
– April Marshall, Commented Oct 4, 2016 at 22:37
I mean, maybe that's the right order, but I'm not fetching the data that is returned. I don't know. I've not done this before. — April Marshall
– April Marshall, Commented Oct 4, 2016 at 22:40

Luke · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-05 00:35:39Z

2

Your function appears to be retrieving the query AFTER attempting to write to the file.

As it looks like you are planning to retrieve the data, write it to a file, and then return the data for further use in your application, I would suggest something like below.

function getPostsToMove($baseurl){  
    $baseurl = $baseurl.'/%/%/%.%';
    $myfile = fopen("/websites/site.dev/wp-content/uploads/newfile.txt", "w") or die("Unable to open file!");

    // Query the data and assign the variable before writing
    global $wpdb;
    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE `guid` not like '$baseurl' and `post_type` = 'attachment' ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 1000");

    // json_encode() to turn the retrieved array into a JSON string for writing to text file
    $output = json_encode($results);

    // write the file
    fwrite($myfile, $output);
    fclose($myfile);

    // return the result (array) for further use in application
    return $results
}

edited Oct 5, 2016 at 0:35

answered Oct 5, 2016 at 0:15

Luke

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3 Comments

Luke Over a year ago

json_encode() is one way to make the array write to a text file. You could, of course, parse the information into a more readable fashion and write accordingly. But that's outside the scope of this question

April Marshall Over a year ago

THANK YOU!. That is what I was missing. The actual parsing and outputting. I would like to learn the better way if you have a link to or resource on that topic. It would be good to know for the future.

Luke Over a year ago

Something like this looks like a good resource to delve deeper into turning an array into 'human readable' format.

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