Question

I need to phrase php strings and “explode” it into 3 variables based on a template.

I tried doing it using the explode function, however it’s a little messy.

    list($name, $role) = explode(' (', $value);
    list($firstName, $lastName) = explode(' ', $name);

For example, I have these strings:

$str_1 = "Jane Joe (Team 1)";
$str_2 = "John Joe (Bank)";

I need to extract first_name, last_name and the role, which is the string in the parentheses.

I also tried regular expressions, but I’m a little rusty with regular expressions

Answer 1

You can try using Regular Expression to get that parts of input string:

PHP preg_match function: http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php

preg_match('~^(.+) (.+)\((.+\))$~', $str_1, $matches);

That kind of call makes that the @matches array contain:

• $matches[0] : whole input string
• $matches[1] : first name
• $matches[2] : last name
• $matches[3] : role

You also can check if that pattern match input string:

if(preg_match('^(.+) (.+)\((.+\))$', $str_1, $matches)) {
    // do something with matches here
}