To dump data into a comma separated file use this:

  SELECT * INTO OUTFILE 'tablename.csv'
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
  LINES TERMINATED BY 'n'
  FROM tablename;

Replace tablename with the tablename of the table you which to dump to a file.

Loading Data into Tables from Text Files.

Assume you have the following table.

            CREATE TABLE loadtest (
                pkey int(11) NOT NULL auto\_increment,
                name varchar(20),
                exam int,
                score int,
                timeEnter timestamp(14),
                PRIMARY KEY  (pkey)
               );

    $ tail /tmp/out.txt
    'name22999990',2,94
    'name22999991',3,93
    'name22999992',0,91
    'name22999993',1,93
    'name22999994',2,90
    'name22999995',3,93
    'name22999996',0,93
    'name22999997',1,89
    'name22999998',2,85
    'name22999999',3,88

NOTE: loadtest contains the "pkey" and "timeEnter" fields which are not
present in the "/tmp/out.txt" file. Therefore, to successfully load
the specific fields issue the following:

         mysql> load data infile '/tmp/out.txt' into table loadtest
                  fields terminated by ',' (name,exam,score);

Getting a random roll of the dice:

          CREATE TABLE dice (
            d\_id int(11) NOT NULL auto\_increment,
            roll int,
            PRIMARY KEY  (d\_id)
          );

          insert into dice (roll) values (1);
          insert into dice (roll) values (2);
          insert into dice (roll) values (3);
          insert into dice (roll) values (4);
          insert into dice (roll) values (5);
          insert into dice (roll) values (6);

          select roll from dice order by rand() limit 1;

We are a fairly large PHP shop at work running some of the largest Danish websites. In a fairly new project, it was suggested that we considered using the Zend Framework to fast track development and piggy back upon some of the components provided by the framework. We looked at it, and said no – at least for now. Since the Zend Framework website does an excellent sales pitch on why you should use it, here’s some of the arguments why you should restrain from using the framework.

It took just over a year, but I’ve finally done it. My inbox contains zero messages. It is a little bit scary, since it hasn’t been empty for the past… well since it was created over a decade ago. I’m not sure it’ll stay there on a daily basis, but I’m quite sure it’ll never reach the thousands of messages ever again. I’ve have been toying with GTD, and while it would probably be more efficient to dive in and go completely native (in GTD), I’m taking the slow adoption curve and try to adopt practices one step at a time and letting them prove to me, that they actually work.