Question on Parsing a Form

Kythor

Hi am relatively new to PHP and am i am currently learning. So i am creating a parser for a game i play to parse some information, break it down it to it different elements and then store it.

Where i'm stuck is how to break it up into its different elements, i'm searching for tutorials for it but though i'd post here and see if i get a reply faster 🙂

ok here is what i'm trying to parse

2005.11.15 22:49:00

Victim: Winged Jaguar
Alliance: The Five
Corporation: Supremacy
Destroyed Type: Thorax
Solar System: Esa
System Security Level: 0.8

Involved parties:

Name: Silvitni
Security Status: 1.6
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Euphoria Released
Ship Type: Capsule
Weapon Type: Light Neutron Blaster II

Name: Parity (laid the final blow)
Security Status: -1.5
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Maza Nostra
Ship Type: Armageddon
Weapon Type: Mega Pulse Laser II

Name: Skidd Chung
Security Status: 0.6
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Euphoria Released
Ship Type: Moa
Weapon Type: Moa

Name: Edenmain
Security Status: 0.4
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Euphoria Released
Ship Type: Crow
Weapon Type: Thorn Rocket I

Destroyed items:

Type: Plutonium Charge S (Cargo)
Quantity: 3982

Type: J5b Phased Prototype Warp Inhibitor I (Fitted - Medium slot)

Type: Antimatter Charge S (Cargo)
Quantity: 6700

Type: Light Ion Blaster II (Fitted - High slot)

Type: Light Ion Blaster II (Fitted - High slot)

Type: Light Ion Blaster II (Fitted - High slot)

Type: Medium Armor Repairer II (Fitted - Low slot)

Type: Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II (Fitted - Low slot)

Type: Energized Reactive Membrane I (Fitted - Low slot)

Type: Plutonium Charge S (Fitted - High slot)
Quantity: 55

now i have managed to break up each line into strings, and view the strings in a var_dump but then am at a loss as how to get the info i need.

When ever a 'killmail' is posted it will have the same format as posted above but different character names, weapons, corporations, etc. How do i get it to recognise the Victim: or Alliance and only store the name of the character e.g Winged Jaguar?

Any ideas or where to look , useful tutorials, will be greatly appreciated. BTW here is how i'm breaking it up into strings, is this right:

$KillMail = explode( "\n", $a );
	foreach( $KillMail as $Line )
	{
		$Clean = htmlentities( trim( $Line ), ENT_QUOTES );
		}
echo '<pre>';
var_dump ($KillMail);
echo '</pre>';

thorpe

why not just get your users to place these into different form fields? makes a hell of allot more sense.

Kythor

True, it would, but at times you could have anywhere upto 20 - 30 to input at one time and doing it that way would take hours. What i'm trying to do is create something like this

Example killboard

Not as advanced or snazzy as it but as close as i can get. As you can see, hundreds apon hundreds get added everyweek, so adding them field by field would take way too long

Weedpacket

If you have control over the format the file is presented in, you might want to consider developing an XML dialect to represent the information; then the problem of parsing it is already solved.

Otherwise - it's a bit hard to make suggestions about how to parse the file without a clear description of the format; it's not clear which lines are grouped with which other lines ... I presume stuff in "Item:" lines all go with the previous "Destroyed items:" line, and so on...... is there any significance to the blank lines? Is all the information for a particular datum going to be on one single line? If it's not, how is it indicated that it covers more than one? If the answer to those first two questions there are "no", and "yes" respectively, and colons separate attribute names from values, then you could use file() to read it in to an array of rows, array_filter() to strip out blank rows, and of course within each row strpos() can find the colon that separates name from value. You'd have to go through the array from first line to last, keeping track of what you've already looked at so that you know what section of the file you're currently reading.

(Incidentally, one possible XML dialect would have the example looking:

<killmail>
	<date='2005.11.15 22:49:00' />
	<victim>Winged Jaguar</victim>
	<alliance>The Five</alliance>
	<corporation>SUpremacy</corporation>
	<destroyedtype>Thorax</destroyedtype>
	<solarsystem>Esa</solarsystem>
	<systemsecuritylevel>0.8</systemsecuritylevel>

<involvedparties>
	<party>
		<name>Silvitni</name>
		<securitystatus>1.6<securitystatus>
		<alliance>NBSI Alliance<alliance>
		<corporation>Euphoria Released<corporation>
		<shiptype>Capsule<shiptype>
		<weapontype>Light Neutron Blaster II<weapontype>
	</party>
	<party>
		<name finalblow='true'>Parity</name>
		<securitystatus>-1.5<securitystatus>
		<alliance>NBSI Alliance<alliance>
		<corporation>Maza Nostra<corporation>
		<shiptype>Armageddon<shiptype>
		<weapontype>Mega Pulse Laser II<weapontype>
	</party>
	<!-- etc.etc. -->
</involvedparties>

<destroyeditems>
	<item quantity='3982'>Plutonium Charge S (Cargo)</item>
	<item>J5b Phased Prototype Warp Inhibitor I (Fitted - Medium slot)</item>
	<!-- etc.etc. -->
</destroyeditems>
</killfile>

)

Kythor

The killmail will always have a certain format:

This will always be the same

2005.11.15 22:49:00

Victim: Winged Jaguar
Alliance: The Five
Corporation: Supremacy
Destroyed Type: Thorax
Solar System: Esa
System Security Level: 0.8

Involved parties:
Name: Silvitni
Security Status: 1.6
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Euphoria Released
Ship Type: Capsule
Weapon Type: Light Neutron Blaster II

but everything after the : differ, while the next bit will differ depending on how many parties involved

Name: Parity (laid the final blow)
Security Status: -1.5
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Maza Nostra
Ship Type: Armageddon
Weapon Type: Mega Pulse Laser II
Name: Skidd Chung
Security Status: 0.6
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Euphoria Released
Ship Type: Moa
Weapon Type: Moa

Name: Edenmain
Security Status: 0.4
Alliance: NBSI Alliance
Corporation: Euphoria Released
Ship Type: Crow
Weapon Type: Thorn Rocket I

The last part is always the same

Destroyed items:

Type: Plutonium Charge S (Cargo)
Quantity: 3982

Type: J5b Phased Prototype Warp Inhibitor I (Fitted - Medium slot)

Type: Antimatter Charge S (Cargo)
Quantity: 6700

Type: Light Ion Blaster II (Fitted - High slot)

Type: Light Ion Blaster II (Fitted - High slot)

Type: Light Ion Blaster II (Fitted - High slot)

Type: Medium Armor Repairer II (Fitted - Low slot)

Type: Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II (Fitted - Low slot)

Type: Energized Reactive Membrane I (Fitted - Low slot)

Type: Plutonium Charge S (Fitted - High slot)
Quantity: 55

, but will differ depending on how many times are destroyed. could be anywhere from 1 - 10,000 ( although the killmail will truncate once it reaches a certain point. not sure of the point that the cutoff is)

I have managed to parse the firt part, from the "Date to Involved Parties" thereafter it is creating a function that will parse the diferent killers and once it reaches the Destroyed Items it will finish and another function will sort the destroyed items out.

To do this i exploded the variable into an array for each line using \n as the cut for each string.