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<title>Introduction</title>
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</div><hr /><div id="intro.dbase" class="preface">
<h1 class="title">Introduction</h1>
<blockquote class="note"><p><strong class="note">Note</strong>:
<p class="para">
This extension has been moved to the
<a href="http://pecl.php.net/" class="link external">» PECL</a> repository and is no longer bundled with
PHP as of PHP 5.3.0.
</p>
</p></blockquote>
<p class="para">
These functions allow you to access records stored in dBase-format
(dbf) databases.
</p>
<div class="warning"><strong class="warning">Warning</strong>
<p class="para">
We recommend against using dBase files as your production
database. Use <a href="http://sqlite.org/" class="link external">» SQLite</a> or choose any real SQL server instead; <a href="http://www.mysql.com/" class="link external">» MySQL</a> or <a href="http://www.postgresql.org/" class="link external">» Postgres</a>
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.
</p>
</div>
<div class="caution"><strong class="caution">Caution</strong>
<p class="para">
As of dbase 7.0.0 the databases are automatically locked via
<span class="function"><a href="function.flock.html" class="function">flock()</a></span>. There has been no support for locking earlier,
so two concurrent web server processes modifying the same dBase file would
have very likely ruined your database. This can happen even with dbase
7.0.0+ on systems which implement the locks at the process level with
multithreaded SAPIs such as ISAPI.
</p>
</div>
<p class="para">
dBase files are simple sequential files of fixed length records.
Records are appended to the end of the file and deleted records are
kept until you call <span class="function"><a href="function.dbase-pack.html" class="function">dbase_pack()</a></span>.
</p>
<p class="para">
Only dbf file levels 3 (dBASE III+) - 5 (dBASE V) are supported.
The types of dBase fields available are:
<table class="doctable table">
<caption><strong>Available types of fields</strong></caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Field</th>
<th>dBase Type</th>
<th>Format</th>
<th>Additional information</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="tbody">
<tr>
<td><em>M</em></td>
<td>Memo</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>This type is not supported by PHP, such field will be ignored</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>D</em></td>
<td>Date</td>
<td><em>YYYYMMDD</em></td>
<td>The field length is limited to 8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>T</em></td>
<td>DateTime</td>
<td><em>YYYYMMDDhhmmss.uuu</em></td>
<td>(FoxPro) No validity checks are done. Available as of dbase 7.0.0.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>N</em></td>
<td>Number</td>
<td>A number</td>
<td>
You must declare a length and a precision (the number of digits
after the decimal point).
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>F</em></td>
<td>Float</td>
<td>A float number</td>
<td>Same as <em>N</em>. Available as of PHP 5.2.0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>C</em></td>
<td>String</td>
<td>A string</td>
<td>You must declare a length. When retrieving data, the string
will be right-padded with spaces to fit the declared length. Overlong
strings will be silently truncated when storing data.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>L</em></td>
<td>Boolean</td>
<td>
<em>T</em> or <em>Y</em> for <strong><code>TRUE</code></strong>,
<em>F</em> or <em>N</em> for <strong><code>FALSE</code></strong>,
<em>?</em> for uninitialized.
</td>
<td>
As of dbase 7.0.0, returned as a <span class="type"><a href="language.types.boolean.html" class="type bool">bool</a></span> (<strong><code>TRUE</code></strong> or <strong><code>FALSE</code></strong>),
or <strong><code>NULL</code></strong> for uninitialized fields.
Formerly, returned as an <span class="type"><a href="language.types.integer.html" class="type int">int</a></span> (<em>1</em> or <em>0</em>).
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</p>
<blockquote class="note"><p><strong class="note">Note</strong>:
<p class="para">
As of dbase 7.0.0 nullable fields are supported for
<strong><code>DBASE_TYPE_FOXPRO</code></strong> databases. If a field is nullable,
passing <strong><code>NULL</code></strong> will set the respective flag, and on later retrieval the field
value will be <strong><code>NULL</code></strong>.
</p>
</p></blockquote>
<blockquote class="note"><p><strong class="note">Note</strong>:
<p class="para">
There is no support for indexes or memo fields.
</p>
</p></blockquote>
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