Which side is better?
It's a question that needs to be asked sometimes, when we talk about JS (Ajax and jQuery included) and PHP.
As we already know, everything that is Javascript works on the client side, while PHP works on the server side.
In the case of large files, reading and managing your data is faster and more secure if we do it on the server side. Then if we want to use Javascript, jQuery or Ajax to update something in the DOM, we can combine the two strategies.
By experience, sometimes it happens that one is blocked somewhere in a program, when this happens it is convenient to ask am I focusing things on the right side ?, would not it be convenient to change sides?
Although, as I said in a comment, everything depends on the context, the scope of the application, who will use it, etc., in a case like this I would not hesitate to work my CSV on the server side.
In addition, the wheel is already invented! if we choose this option, since there is a PHP Class that is responsible for doing almost everything.
I refer to CSVReader, which can be obtained at this address from PhpClasses.org :
This is a class that can be used to parse CSV (Comma Separated Values)
files.
The class can also handle CSV files uploaded to a Web server using
forms.
The parsed files can be outputted as an HTML table.
This is a class that can be used to read a CSV (file
separated by commas). The class can also handle the rise of
files to a web server using a form. The files
Uploads can be presented as an HTML table.
* Or in any other way that we want, adding supplementary methods to the same class.
Having our class, which is nothing more than a php file that we can download at the address indicated above, we can upload and read any file using a code snippet like this:
<?php
include_once('csvImp.class.php');
$csv = new csvImp();
if (isset($_GET['action'])){
$action=$_GET['action'];
if($action = 'upload'){
$csv->fileUpload();
}
if($action = 'form'){?>
<form method="post" action="csv.php?action=upload" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="file" name="txtfile"><br>
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
<?php }
}
?>
As you can see:
- having a file called
csv.php with a form to get our csv from our local environment
- the class is included (we are supposed to have it on our server):
include_once('csvImp.class.php');
- the method
fileUpload() of the class is invoked, which is responsible for reading the file and presenting it as a table
If we want to give the csv another use, we can simply add another method to the class that does what we need.
I leave this answer as another possibility, trying to open a little more the horizon:)
So ... Which side is better? That is the question!