Find if a value exist in a CSV file with PHP

Question

This is my code to check if a row of my .csv file contains a specific name, but it does not work.

I think it has something to do with the if statement.

$file_handle = fopen("sources.csv", "r");

while (!feof($file_handle) ) {

    $line_of_text = fgetcsv($file_handle, 1024);

    if ($line_of_text[0] = 'paul') {
        echo 'Found';
    }
}
fclose($file_handle);

I am trying to check in sources.csv files, for the name 'Paul' .

I can't use a database like MySQL for technical reasons.

Answer 1

Your problem is this line:

if ($line_of_text[0] = 'paul') {

This will always be true because you are assigning the value paul to $line_of_text[0] with the assign operator =. What you want to do is check if the two are equal, so you need to use the equality operator, ==. The line of code should be:

if ($line_of_text[0] == 'paul') {

There is also the === equality operator in PHP which checks for the same value AND same type. (This is a particularly nasty feature of PHP when compared to compiled languages)

e.g. consider: `$foo = 5; $bar = "5";

if ($foo === $bar)  // this will be false because foo is an int, and bar is a string

if ($foo == $bar) // this will be true

Don't be confused with the != comparison operator:

if ($foo != $bar) // foo is not equal to bar (note the single =)