Posted by Richard Lynch on 10/02/42 11:15

On Tue, May 3, 2005 10:57 am, Don said:
> I am using php 4.3.11 on a RedHat Linux server running Apache. I have a
> requirement where I need to take a flat file containing formatted data and
> produce an Access 97 MDB file.
>
> Does anyone know of a class or library that will enable me to do this?

You can "cheat" and take the formatted data and turn it into tab-delimited
or CSV, and then when they download it, get the filename to end in ".xls"
and then when they open it up, it will fire up Excel, which will
automatically import the delimited data.

From they, they can save as Access, almost for sure.

I don't think MS has published the Access 97 MDB file as an open standard,
so you'd be hard-pressed to find what you asked for... Though I could be
wrong, as I don't really give a rat's ass about MS products, least of all
MS Access.

Another possibility, if you have a Windows server running Access, would be
to set that up to use ODBC, and then you can use PHP with ODBC to alter
things in that database. You *might* even be able to CREATE DATABASE and
then CREATE TABLE and cause Access to build the MDB file for you, all
through ODBC.

Expect to spend a fair amount of time fighting with DSN, ODBC and the PHP
ODBC packages... This was non-trivial back in the day when I was doing
it, and a fair amount of mis-information was "out there" about which ODBC
drivers were better/faster/easier to use.

NOTE: MS Access is simply NOT up to snuff for multi-user access. If you
are expecting this to work for an occasional admin feature, used by only
one user at a time, you'll probably be fine. But if every visitor to your
site will be hitting MS Access, you can count on your application never
scaling up well. MS Access will crash and burn when two users hit it at
once. Sorry.

YMMV

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