Question

I need to grab the words out of this string and replace with AND LIKE/NOT LIKE in a sql statement, but I’m pulling my hair out trying to figure it out 🙂

$string = "hello -world !someword ! again |foo &foo AND foo ORfoo";
if (preg_match_all("/AND|OR|\||&|!|\-(\w+)/", "$string", $matches)) {
        foreach ($matches as $match) {
                foreach ($match as $m) {
                        // 1. figure out what the delimiter was (!, |, &, -, AND, OR
                        // 2. create a sql statement from it using the word following the delimiter
                        // Example:
                        if ($m = "!") {
                                $where .= " AND msg NOT like '%".$m."%'";
                        }
                        if ($m = "AND") {
                                $where .= " AND msg like '%".$m."%'";
                        }
                        if ($m = "OR") {
                                $where .= " OR msg like '%".$m."%'";
                        }
                }
        }
}
echo $where;

Answer 1

Use the code below to gather your regex matches. Remember, preg_match_all is meant to collect all occurrences of a given pattern. Notice I used preg_match instead. The “\s*” allows you to match whitespace if it exists.

$results = array();
$word_to_capture = '\s*(\w+)%';
$patterns[] = "%(AND)" . $word_to_capture;
$patterns[] = "%(&)" . $word_to_capture;
$patterns[] = "%(OR)" . $word_to_capture;
$patterns[] = "%(\|)" . $word_to_capture;
$patterns[] = "%(!)" . $word_to_capture;
$patterns[] = "%(-)" . $word_to_capture;

foreach($patterns as $p):
    preg_match($p,$string,$matches);
    $results[] = $matches;
endforeach;

You can then iterate over the $results array to create your MySQL query. The resulting array will look like this.

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => AND foo
            [1] => AND
            [2] => foo
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => &foo
            [1] => &
            [2] => foo
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => ORfoo
            [1] => OR
            [2] => foo
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => |foo
            [1] => |
            [2] => foo
        )

    [4] => Array
        (
            [0] => !someword
            [1] => !
            [2] => someword
        )

    [5] => Array
        (
            [0] => -world
            [1] => -
            [2] => world
        )

)

I added an additional capture to the regex. Your different patterns will be in element 1 and the word will be in element 2.

You can use the code below to create your query fragment:

$query_fragment = "";
foreach($results as $r):
    switch (trim($r[1])):
        case "AND":
            $query_fragment .= " AND msg LIKE '%" . $r[2] . "%'";
            break;
        case "!":
            $query_fragment .= " AND msg NOT LIKE '%" . $r[2] . "%'";
            break;
        case "&":
            $query_fragment .= " AND msg LIKE '%" . $r[2] . "%'";
            break;
        case "OR":
            $query_fragment .= " OR msg LIKE '%" . $r[2] . "%'";
            break;
        case "|":
            $query_fragment .= " OR msg LIKE '%" . $r[2] . "%'";
            break;
    endswitch;
endforeach;