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POPHP - Create UL Nested Lists From Flatfile
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  1. POPHP - Create UL Nested Lists From Flatfile
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    copied!<p>(<em>Before anyone asks... I cannot use a MySQL database for this project.)</em></p> <p>Using PHP, I need to create nested UL's from a flatfile database. The issue that I'm having is that I don't want duplicate items displayed. I could explain further, but if you'll take a look at the code below, you'll see the data and the goal. Thanks. <br /><br /> <strong>FLATFILE DATA:</strong></p> <pre> section|category|service Section One|Category One| Section One|Category Two|SC1 Section One|Category Two|SC2 Section One|Category Two|SC3 Section One|Category Two|SC4 Section One|Category Three| Section Two|Category Four|SC5 Section Two|Category Four|SC6 Section Three|Category Five|SC7 </pre> <p><br /> <strong>HTML GOAL OUTPUT:</strong> <br /></p> <pre><code>&lt;ul class="section"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Section One &lt;ul class="category"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Category One&lt;/li&gt; &lt;!-- no service --&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /category --&gt; &lt;ul class="category"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Category Two&lt;/li&gt; &lt;ul class="service"&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC1&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC2&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC3&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC4&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /service --&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /category --&gt; &lt;ul class="category"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Category Three&lt;/li&gt; &lt;!-- no service --&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /category --&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /section --&gt; &lt;ul class="section"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Section Two &lt;ul class="category"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Category Four&lt;/li&gt; &lt;ul class="service"&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC5&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC6&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /service --&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /category --&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /section --&gt; &lt;ul class="section"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Section Three &lt;ul class="category"&gt; &lt;li&gt;Category Five&lt;/li&gt; &lt;ul class="service"&gt; &lt;li&gt;SC7&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /service --&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /category --&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;!-- /section --&gt; </code></pre> <p>My 1st attempt... thinking that I need to first check if the "section" exists, then assign the current "section" to a "section_last" to compare the next "section" with the current "section" value ... and if not, print the "section" ... and then onto the category. <em>I didn't code the "service" value section because I wasn't haven't any success with the section &amp; category values. It seems that I'm having an issue with either the 'logic' behind this or maybe there's a method for comparing the past value in the loop with the next value that PHP offers that I'm missing.</em></p> <p>After seeing the example code from @Kyle S, I may be on a completely incorrect path for coding this.</p> <pre><code>&lt;?php $section = ''; $category = ''; $service = ''; $section_last = ''; $category_last = ''; $service_last = ''; $x = 0; $file = fopen("categories_data.txt", "r"); if (!$file) { echo 'ERROR: Unable to open file: &lt;strong&gt;'.$file.'&lt;/strong&gt;'; } fgets($file); // IGNORE FIRST LINE IN FLATFILE - column names while (!feof($file) ) { $lines = fgets($file); $ele = explode('|', $lines); $section = $ele[0]; $category = $ele[1]; $service = $ele[2]; $service = str_replace(array("\n", "\r", "\r\n", "\n\r"), '',$service); if(strlen($section)&gt;0) { if(!($section == $section_last)) { echo ' &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;'.$section; $section_last = $section; $x++; } } echo ' &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;'.$category.' &gt; '.$service.'&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; '; if($x) { if($section != $section_last) { echo ' &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; '; } } } // end $data_file WHILE fclose($file); ?&gt; </code></pre>
 

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