Question

I need a regular for time format HH:MM am/pm. I found something like

$time = "HH:MM am";
preg_match('/[\s0]*(\d|1[0-2]):(\d{2})\s*([AaPp][Mm])/xms', $time, $match);    
$h = $match[1];    
$m = $match[2];    
$a = $match[3];

There are lot of regular expression for time. But what i am looking is if someone write aa:mn jk instead of number then it should give $h=aa $m=mn and $a=jk Or if someone keep them blank or partial filled like abcd then $h=abcd $m=null and $a=null.

I solved it using for loop and some if else but hope some can help me to do it using regular expression or using some PHP function.

Answer 1

Using Regex might be a little overkill. Use the explode() function instead.

<?php
$str = 'aa:bb cc'; // or 'abcd'
$a = explode(':', $str);
$b = isset($a[1]) ? explode(' ', $a[1]) : NULL;
$h = $a[0];
$m = isset($b[0]) ? $b[0] : NULL;
$a = isset($b[1]) ? $b[1] : NULL;
var_dump($h, $m, $a);