Definitely Un-Proofread

This is a very tiny project, that was needed from a single, very specific project, but it seemed worth doing all polished and right, so here is my latest GitHub repository:

Simple PHP Class and command line script for splitting a CSV file into several child files.

This class requires PHP 5.3 or later, and the PEAR File_CSV class (see http://pear.php.net/package/File_CSV).

This class allows for simple splitting of a large CSV file into smaller pieces, for easier parsing by memory-limited tools. The header / first line of the CSV file is preserved across all of the generated CSV files.

Generated files are named with the name of the master / source CSV file, an incrementing number, and the a CSV extension. So, if provided a CSV file with 1000 lines in it named “example.csv”, this class would write 10 files, named “example-1.csv” through “example-10.csv”, in the specified directory.

A sample, command line tool for use with the class is also included. This file, “csv_splitter.php”, requires the PEAR Console_Getargs package (see http://pear.php.net/package/Console_Getargs). Information on using this tool is available by running “php csv_splitter.php —help” on the command line.

Peter E. Snyder - snyderp@gmail.com

I’m currently working on a project that requires building a module for ExpressionEngine.  Its not proving to be my favorite system (to put it mildly), but the upside of the EE folks providing little to no documentation on how the code in the guts of their system works is that I’ve had (gotten to?) figure it out for myself.

One problem I just ran across is how to access functionality from another third_party module, from my third_party module.  Sometimes this is done for you, but other times (such as in an action) the system is only minimally initialized and other modules aren’t in memory / place.

The solution is pretty simple, but its not documented anywhere I could find.  To save other folks the several hours of head banging I went through, here is the simple solution (assuming you want to load up an “example_module” module):

     // 1) Add the path of the module you want to load to the system wide, CodeIgniter path:
     //  $this->EE->load->add_package_path(PATH_THIRD . 'example_module');

     // 2) Manually load up the module's core class (ie don't use the CI_Loader methods):
     // require PATH_THIRD . 'example_module/mod. example_module.php';

     // 3) Add the module to the EE object, since this is where the rest of the system will expect to find it.
     // $this->EE->example_module = new Example_module();

And thats that. So simple you think they would have documented it somewhere :-/