we are getting .txt file but not getting proper alignment

Question

we are getting the following texfile_screenshot1.JPG when we are exporting data to .txt file

we need output which is shown in texfile_screenshot2.JPG

following is the code

$myFile = "user_password.txt";
     $fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
     $newline ="\r\n";
     fwrite ($fh,$newline);

      $stringData1 = $_POST['uname1']." "." "." " ;
      fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

      $stringData1 =$_POST['password1']." "." "." ";
      fwrite($fh,$stringData1);

  $stringData1 = $_POST['email1']." "." "." ";
      fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

 fclose($fh);

Answer 1

You need to print a "\t" (tab) instead of three concatenated spaces.

Like so

$stringData1 = $_POST['uname1']."\t";
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

EDIT: This may not always work though, if your the difference in length of the strings are more than one tab. If you're creating a tab delimited file, this will work. If you want some sort of column-view this is not a good approach.. (another edit; paxdiablos answer is better for the second method.)

Answer 2

You need to use tabs (\t) instead of spaces to get column-like alignement

Here is your example updated

  $myFile = "user_password.txt";
  $fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
  $newline ="\r\n";
  fwrite ($fh,$newline);

  $stringData1 = $_POST['uname1']."\t" ;
  fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

  $stringData1 =$_POST['password1']."\t";
  fwrite($fh,$stringData1);

  $stringData1 = $_POST['email1']."\t";
  fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

  fclose($fh);

Answer 3

All you seem to be doing is appending three spaces to the end of each field. Perhaps you should be doing something more like:

$stringData1 = substr($_POST['uname1'] . "              ",0,14) . " ";
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

In other words, make sure the field is 14 characters or more, the truncate it to 14.

Or better yet, use the printf facilities:

fprintf ($fh, "%-14s ", $_POST['uname1']);

In fact, your entire segment could be compressed to something like:

$myFile = "user_password.txt";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'a') or die("can't open file");
fprintf ($fh, "\r\n%14s %14s %14s",  $_POST['uname1'], $_POST['password1'],
    $_POST['email1']);
fclose($fh);

Answer 4

Well, you're writing uname1, password1 and email1 to a file, separated with three spaces (and for what reason ever, three more spaces at the end of each line).

Use str_repeat to add as many spaces as you need: http://php.net/manual/de/function.str-repeat.php

Like this:

$stringData1 = $POST['uname1'] . str_repeat(" ", $longest_uname - strlen($POST['uname1']) + 1);
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
$stringData1 = $POST['password1'] . str_repeat(" ", $longest_password - strlen($POST['password1']) + 1);
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);
$stringData1 = $POST['email1'] . str_repeat(" ", $longest_email - strlen($POST['email1']) + 1);
fwrite($fh, $stringData1);

You'll need to find out $longest_uname, $longest_password, $longest_email first by iterating through your array and finding the longest string for each of your columns.

If you don't need the last column to be right-padded with spaces, you can skip the "longest_email"-part.

EDIT: Of course the "tab"-solutions mentioned here will work, too, but only if the difference between the lengths of your strings in one column will not exceed one tab. Also the "substr(..., 14)"-method will work, but only if no string is longer than 14 characters ...