Question

I need to extract data from unstructured string coming from a sms

The data I need to extract is the following

Code: This a 5 letter alphanumeric string it must contain at least one digit

Identity document: This is a numeric string between 5 and 8 characters, valid formats are:

V55555555
E55555555
55555
55 555
E55 555 555
55 555 555
5 555 555
555 555

The data I need to extract could be in any position in the string, I have normalized the string,
replaced duplicate spaces by only one, and deleting anything that is not a space, number and letter

Samples

1. resuelvete 15C20 Pdero Perez c.i. V55.555.555,
2. Pedro Perez resuelvete 15c20 55 555 555,
3. 15c20 Resuelvete 555555 Pedro Perez,
4. Resuelvete 555555 Pedro Perez 15c20

For the code part I’ve tried this regex:

$regex = '/([a-zA-Z0-9]{5})/i';

I also tried this: $regex = '(?=.{5})(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*\d)[a-zA-Z\d]';, that I see here but it’s not working (I must say I don’t totally understand this regex)

But it’s not working, its returnig the first five characters of the string, I need it to return in this examples 15c20

For the Identity document part I’ve tried the following:

// This not work with spaces
$regex = "/(V|E)?(\d{5,8})/i";

// This not work without spaces
//This fail in first case returning only 7 digits instead of 8
// Also fails in cases  3 and 4,  does not match anything
$regex = "/(V|E)?(\d{1,2}? ?\d{3} ?\d{3})/i";

Answer 1

[EDIT] I changed all \w‘s in the following regex pattern into [a-zA-Z0-9] because \w includes the underscore ( _ ) character as well, which I forgot at the time I wrote this answer.

For the code you can use something like

~\b(?=[a-zA-Z0-9]{5}\b)[a-zA-Z0-9]*\d[a-zA-Z0-9]*~

which can be broken into

\b                  # a word boundary (beginning of word in this case)
(?=                 # from here on...
    [a-zA-Z0-9]{5}  # 5 alphanumeric characters (a-z,A-Z,0-9)
    \b              # followed by a word boundary (end of word)
)
[a-zA-Z0-9]*        # 0 or more alphanumeric characters (a-z,A-Z,0-9)
\d                  # a decimal
[a-zA-Z0-9]*        # 0 or more alphanumeric characters (a-z,A-Z,0-9)

For the id document… If there are no possible groupings other than the examples you provided, you can use something like

'~(?<=\b|\bE|\bV)(?=[\d\ .]{5,10}\b)(
    \d{8}|
    \d{5}|
    \d{3}[\ .]\d{3}|
    \d{2}([\ .])\d{3}(\2\d{3})?|
    \d([\ .])\d{3}\4\d{3}
)~x'

and this says

(?<=                        # preceded by
    \b|                     # a word boundary (beginning of word) or
    \bE|                    # a word boundary (beginning of word) and E or
    \bV                     # a word boundary (beginning of word) and V
)
(?=                         # from here on...
    [\d\ .]{5,10}           # a group consisting of only decimals, spaces and dots 
    \b                      # followed by a word boundary (end of word)
)
(                           # either:
    \d{8}|                  # an 8 digit number
    \d{5}|                  # a 5 digit number
    \d{3}[\ .]\d{3}|        # a 3 digit number, space or dot, a 3 digit number
    \d{2}([\ .])\d{3}       # a 2 digit number, space or dot, a 3 digit number
    (                       # optionally...
        \2                  # previous sign (space or dot)
        \d{3}               # a 3 digit number
    )?| 
    \d([\ .])\d{3}\4\d{3}   # a 1 digit number, space or dot, a 3 digit number, previous sign, a 3 digit number
)