help extracting data

swmaster

I have a text file I need to extract 2 values from. The data I need is in the form

The file has a lot of other junk I don't need. "<tag" is unique and only occurs once in the file. I need to assign these values to a couple PHP variables. The number of digits in each number might change. The names "var1" and "var2" will not change, but are not unique (other tags might use the same variable names).

What is the best way to do this in PHP? I tried regex, but I am not very good with regex.

wilku

Here's a link to the function I wrote for finding text between some values:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?t=10299775&highlight=Findtextbetween
It should help you a little.

swmaster

It looks like preg_match() would be a good place for me to start.

I am having trouble just matching:

What would a pattern look like?

Logically, I want "<tag" + * + "/>" but I just can't figure it out :o

wilku

Try something like this:

<?php
preg_match('|<tag var1="(.*)" var2="(.*)" />|',$input_text,$matches);
//$matches should contain what you want
var_dump($matches);
?>

swmaster

Thanks for the help.
This code seems to be working.
The (.) helped along with the U to set it to ungreedy.

function test($file) {
	// Get rid of everything except <tag var1="5.55" var2="-66.6"/>
	$pattern = '|<tag (.*)/>|U';
	preg_match($pattern, $file, $matches);

// Extract var1
$pattern = '|var1="(.*)"|U';
preg_match($pattern, $matches[1], $var1);
$out['var1'] = $var1[1];

// Extract var2
$pattern = '|var2="(.*)"|U';
preg_match($pattern, $matches[1], $var2);
$out['var2'] = $var2[1];

return($out);
}