Flat-file database in PHP.
Based on the Fllat and Prequel libraries by Wylst. Special mention for Alfred Xing who seems to be the main contributor behind both. With added support for:
- Encrypted databases using php-encryption by Taylor Hornby
- Composer via Packagist
Install Condense via Composer like this:
composer require lambdacasserole/condense
Or alternatively, if you're using the PHAR (make sure the php.exe
executable is in your PATH):
php composer.phar require lambdacasserole/condense
To initialize a new database or load an existing one, do this.
$db = new Database('employees');
This will, by default, create a file db/employees.dat
or load that file, if it already exists. You can change the path at which the flat file database will be created thusly.
$db = new Database('employees', '../storage');
The constructor also accepts a third parameter which allows you to specify a key to use to encrypt the database with.
$db = new Database('secrets', '../private', 'my-secret-password');
When loading the database again, this same password must be used.
Use insert
to add a record (row) to the database.
$hire = ['first_name' => 'Ethan', 'last_name' => 'Benson', 'salary' => 20000];
$employees->insert($hire);
Condense provides several methods for data retrieval.
Use the get
method. Specify a field name, another field name, and a value. It will return the value of the first field where (in the same row), the value of the second field matches the given value.
// Returns the salary of the first employee with the first name 'Ethan' (20000).
$employees->get('salary', 'first_name', 'Ethan');
Use the select
method. Returns some (or all) fields in a table, specified by giving an array of desired field names.
// Returns the whole database.
$employees->select([]);
// Returns the first name of each employee, for example:
// [['Ethan'],['Thomas'],['James']]
$employees->select(['first_name']);
Condense provides a couple of methods for updating existing data in a database.
Use the to
method to update one field for any row satisfying a condition.
// Change every employee with a first name 'Ethan' to have the surname 'Smithers'.
$employees->to('last_name', 'Smithers', 'first_name', 'Ethan');
Use the update
method to update a row by index.
// Change the first row in the database completely.
$employees->update(0, ['first_name' => 'Alison', 'last_name' => 'Bradberry']);
Use the remove
method to delete a row in the database.
// Remove the first row in the database.
$employees->remove(0);
This is a flat file database system. It removes the headache of setting up and configuring a database server, but introduces a few of its own:
- I/O will be much slower due to many disk read/write actions
- Encrypting a database will hugely affect performance
- Bugs may arise due to concurrency issues
- Misconfigured web applications using this library may accidentally allow their databases to be downloaded over HTTP