Question

I’ve got a string that I need to parse into an array in PHP. The string looks something like this:

(Key: ALL_HTTP)(Value:HTTP_HOST:10.1.1.1 )(Key: ALL_RAW)(Value:Host: 10.1.1.1:80 )(Key: APPL_MD_PATH)(Value:/ROOT)(Key: AUTH_TYPE)(Value:)(Key: AUTH_USER)(Value:)(Key: AUTH_PASSWORD)(Value:)(Key: LOGON_USER)(Value:)(Key: REMOTE_USER)(Value:)

The number of “key/value” pairs could be unlimited but is usually about 30-40 per string.

I’ve been playing with preg_match and a variation of an example from PHP.net – something like this:

preg_match('/(\S+): (\S+)/', $string, $result);

That gets me back the first key as $result[0] but doesn’t help for the rest.

If anyone could help me with a proper expression that would be fantastic. I’d also appreciate any good reading resources for splitting strings with PCRE.

Thanks all!

Answer 1

Try something along the lines of

preg_match_all('/\(([^:)]+):\s*([^)]*)\)/',
        "(Key: ALL_HTTP)(Value:HTTP_HOST:10.1.1.1 )(Key: ALL_RAW)(Value:Host: 10.1.1.1:80 )(Key: APPL_MD_PATH)(Value:/ROOT)(Key: AUTH_TYPE)(Value:)(Key: AUTH_USER)(Value:)(Key: AUTH_PASSWORD)(Value:)(Key: LOGON_USER)(Value:)(Key: REMOTE_USER)(Value:)",
        $out, PREG_SET_ORDER);

foreach ($out as $pair) {
    echo "ALL: ".$pair[0]."\n";
    echo "KEY: ".$pair[1]."\n";
    echo "VAL: ".$pair[2]."\n";
}

You probably don’t need the ALL lines.

Based on your sample string, you might like this regex better:

'/\(Key: ([^)]+)\)\(Value:([^)]*)\)/'