Question

I would like to scan a large piece of text using PHP and find all matches for a pattern, but then also 2 lines above the match and 2 lines below.

My text looks like this, but with some extra unnecessary text above and below this sample:

1

Description text

123.456.12

10.00

10.00

3

Different Description text

234.567.89

10.00

30.00

#Some footer text that is not needed and will change for each text file#

15

More description text

564.238.02

4.00

60.00

15

More description text

564.238.02

4.00

60.00

#Some footer text that is not needed and will change for each text file#

15

More description text

564.238.02

4.00

60.00

15

More description text

564.238.02

4.00

60.00

Using PHP, I am looking to match each number in bold (always same format – 3 numbers, dot, 3 numbers, dot, 2 numbers) but then also return the previous 2 lines and the next 2 lines and hopefully return an array so that I can use:

$contents[$i]["qty"] = "1";
$contents[$i]["description"] = "Description text";
$contents[$i]["price"] = "10.00";
$contents[$i]["total"] = "10.00";

etc…

Is this possible and would I use regex? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

ANSWERED BY vzwick

This is my final code that I used:

$items_array = array();
$counter = 0;

if (preg_match_all('/(\d+)\n\n(\w.*)\n\n(\d{3}\.\d{3}\.\d{2})\n\n(\d.*)\n\n(\d.*)/', $text_file, $matches)) {

    $items_string = $matches[0];
    foreach ($items_string as $value){

        $item = explode("\n\n", $value);

        $items_array[$counter]["qty"] = $item[0];
        $items_array[$counter]["description"] = $item[1];
        $items_array[$counter]["number"] = $item[2];
        $items_array[$counter]["price"] = $item[3];
        $items_array[$counter]["total"] = $item[4];

        $counter++;

    }

}
else
{
    die("No matching patterns found");
}

print_r($items_array);

Answer 1

$filename = "yourfile.txt";
$fp = @fopen($filename, "r");
if (!$fp) die('Could not open file ' . $filename);

$i = 0; // element counter
$n = 0; // inner element counter

$field_names = array('qty', 'description', 'some_number', 'price', 'total');
$result_arr = array();

while (($line = fgets($fp)) !== false) {
    $result_arr[$i][$field_names[$n]] = trim($line);
    $n++;
    if ($n % count($field_names) == 0) {
        $i++;
        $n = 0;
    }
}

fclose($fp);
print_r($result_arr);

Edit: Well, regex then.

$filename = "yourfile.txt";
$file_contents = @file_get_contents($filename);
if (!$file_contents) die("Could not open file " . $filename . " or empty file");
if (preg_match_all('/(\d+)\n\n(\w.*)\n\n(\d{3}\.\d{3}\.\d{2})\n\n(\d.*)\n\n(\d.*)/', $file_contents, $matches)) {
    print_r($matches[0]);
    // do your matching to field names from here ..
}
else
{
    die("No matching patterns found");
}