Question

I’m receiving a string like this:

{
    key1 = "some value";
    key2 = "some value";
    key3 = "some value";
    key4 = 1235678;
}

and I need to parse it so it becomes a valid php object or array. I suppose Regex is the way to go but I’m really bad at it.

Answer 1

Try this .. Crazy But it works ( I would recommend JSON anyway )

    $string = '{
        key1 = "some value";
        key2 = "some value";
        key3 = "some value";
        key4 = 1235678;
    }' ;



    var_dump(parseString($string));

    function parseString($string)
    {
        $output = array();
        $string = str_replace(array("{","}"), "", $string);
        $string = explode(";",$string) ;

        foreach($string as $values)
        {
            $values = trim($values);

            if(strpos($values, "="))
            {
                list($key,$value) = explode("=",$values);
                $value = trim($value) ;
                $value = trim($value,"\"") ;
                $key = trim($key);
                $output[$key] = $value;
            }
        }

        return $output ;
    }

Result

    array
    'key1 ' => string 'some value' (length=10)
    'key2 ' => string 'some value' (length=10)
    'key3 ' => string 'some value' (length=10)
    'key4 ' => string '1235678' (length=7)