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I'm working on one of those projects where there are a million better ways to accomplish what I need but I have no choice and I have to do it this way. Here it is:
There is a web form, when the user fills it out and hits a submit a human readable text file is created using the form data. It looks like this:
field_1: value for field one
field_2: value for field two
more data for field two (field two has a newline in it!)
field3: some more data
My problem is this: I need to parse this text file back into the web form so that the user can edit it.
How could I, in a foolproof way, accomplish this? A database is not an option, I have to use these text files.
My Questions:
- Is there a foolproof way to do this using the format in the example above?
- What human readable format would work better (in other words I can change the format)
- Human readable means that a non programmer could read it and know what is what.
This project uses PHP.
UPDATE
By human readable I mean that anyone could read the text and not be overwhelmed by it, including your grandmother.