XXV. dBase Functions

Introduction

These functions allow you to access records stored in dBase-format (dbf) databases.

dBase files are simple sequential files of fixed length records. Records are appended to the end of the file and delete records are kept until you call dbase_pack().

The types of dBase fields available are:

Table 1. Available types of fields

Field	dBase Type	Format	Additional information
`M`	Memo	n/a	This type is not supported by PHP, such field will be ignored
`D`	Date	`YYYYMMDD`	The field length is limited to 8
`N`	Number	A number	You must declare a length and a precision (the number of digits after the decimal point)
`C`	String	A string	You must declare a length. When retrieving data, the string will be right-padded with spaces to fit the declared length.
`L`	Boolean	`T` or `Y` for `TRUE`, `F` or `N` for `FALSE`	Stored and returned as an integer (1 or 0)
`F`	Float	A float number	Support for this type of field was added in PHP 5.2.0

Warning

There is no support for indexes or memo fields. There is no support for locking, too. Two concurrent web server processes modifying the same dBase file will very likely ruin your database.

We recommend that you do not use dBase files as your production database. Choose any real SQL server instead; MySQL or Postgres are common choices with PHP. dBase support is here to allow you to import and export data to and from your web database, because the file format is commonly understood by Windows spreadsheets and organizers.

Installation

In order to enable the bundled dbase library and to use these functions, you must compile PHP with the --enable-dbase option.

Runtime Configuration

This extension has no configuration directives defined in php.ini.

Resource Types

This extension has no resource types defined.

Examples

Many examples in this reference require a dBase database. We will use /tmp/test.dbf that will be created in the example of dbase_create().

Predefined Constants

This extension has no constants defined.

Table of Contents
dbase_add_record -- Adds a record to a database
dbase_close -- Closes a database
dbase_create -- Creates a database
dbase_delete_record -- Deletes a record from a database
dbase_get_header_info -- Gets the header info of a database
dbase_get_record_with_names -- Gets a record from a database as an associative array
dbase_get_record -- Gets a record from a database as an indexed array
dbase_numfields -- Gets the number of fields of a database
dbase_numrecords -- Gets the number of records in a database
dbase_open -- Opens a database
dbase_pack -- Packs a database
dbase_replace_record -- Replaces a record in a database