Question

I have the following problem:

I have a Text with the e.g. the following Format:

min: 34.0 max: 79.0383 lifetime: 17% code:iweo7373333

It’s not a fixed text Type, means min can also be -7.94884444 or so. How can i extract the parts in e.g. an array like

$result['min'] = 34.0;
$result['max'] = 79.0383
and so on...

I did it at the moment with replacing spaces, then replace “min:” with nothing, “max:”, “lifetime:”, … with “,” and then an explode… The main Problem is that sometimes other variables are between min, max, …. so the positions do not hold the correct values.

Also – i think – it’s not a really good coding style or? Is this possible with regex or preg_replace?

Thanks,
Sascha

Answer 1

Also – i think – it’s not a really good coding style or?

There is no need to be authoritative about it. It depends on your purposes. I would personally opt for JSON in this case. XML can be an overkill most of the times.
The only advantage I see in keeping that format you proposed is that it has no need for complex syntax using {}()[];, (and it seems you don’t need nesting).

This regex will match all the parameter:value combinations from your string, being very tolerant with use of whitespace on values:

(?<=^| )[A-Za-z-_]{0,}:[.,\$\-\+\s%\w]{0,}(?<=\s|\Z|^)

So in PHP:

$string = "simple:I like to exchange data a-css-like-parameter: 34px CamelCasedParameter: -79.0383 underlined_parameter: 17%";

preg_match_all('/(?<=^| )[A-Za-z-_]{0,}:[.,\$\-\+\s%\w]{0,}(?<=\s|\Z|^)/', $string, $matches);

$parameters = array();
foreach($matches[0] as $parameter){
    $exploded = explode(':', $parameter);
    $parameters[$exploded[0]] = trim($exploded[1]);
}

print_r($parameters);

Output:

> Array
> (
>    [simple] => I like to exchange data
>    [a-css-like-parameter] => 34px
>    [CamelCasedParameter] => -79.0383
>    [underlined_parameter] => 17%
> )