Can a print a formated array to a file using php?

Question

I know I can print an array using print_r() function in PHP like this

print_r($array);

And to make it look pretty in the browser, I can wrap it up with the HTML <pre> block like this

echo '<pre>';
print_r($array);
echo '</pre>';

But, how can I write the second nice output to a file not to a browser using HTML?

Here is what I have tried

$file = fopen('test.log', 'a+');
fwrite($file, print_r($this->header, TRUE) . PHP_EOL);
fclose($file);

But, that does not write the array's content nicely in the test.log file. it writes it as a data dump which is hard to read.

How can I nicely print the array content for easy read

Replace each space between newline and first alphanumerical character with \t (tabulator). This should create nice indents. — DeDee
– DeDee, Commented Aug 27, 2015 at 16:46

Junior · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-27 17:22:21Z

2

I found 2 way to do this. the first one, the credit goes to Md. Khairul Islam

this method will use a foreach to write the array content to the file

private function fwriteArray($result, $file){

    if( !is_array($result) && !is_object($result)) {    
            return false;
    }

    foreach($result as $k => $v){
        if(is_array($v) || is_object($v) ){

            $this->fwriteArray($v, $file);

        } else {
            fwrite($file, '    [' . $k.'] => ' .  $v . PHP_EOL);
        }
    }
}

second method is to convert the array to json string and use JSON_PRETTY_PRINT to print the data nicely

fwrite($file, PHP_EOL . str_replace("\n", PHP_EOL, json_encode( $myArray, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT)));

edited Aug 27, 2015 at 17:22

answered Aug 27, 2015 at 17:14

Junior

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Comments

jewelhuq · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-27 17:03:02Z

0

Try the following code. I do not know what $this->header is working inside your webapp. But assuming its a array . the following example works file for single array .

 $text="";
 $file = fopen('test.log', 'a+');
 foreach($this->header as $key=>$val)
  {
  $text.="$key=>$val \n\r";
  }
fwrite($file, $text);
fclose($file);

answered Aug 27, 2015 at 17:03

jewelhuq

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1 Comment

DeDee Over a year ago

I won't format it nicely, which is key problem for author.

Henrique Barcelos · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-27 17:11:08Z

0

You can use output control.

ob_start();
print_r($array);
$content = ob_get_clean();

$file = fopen('test.log', 'a+');
fwrite($file, $content . PHP_EOL);
fclose($file);

answered Aug 27, 2015 at 17:11

Henrique Barcelos

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