[RESOLVED] Parsing Data and Breaking Out into Elements

corpking

Hello, I'm in a bit of a jam with a dataset I'm working on. I need to let users edit data that's bracket delimited and can't figure out the best way to do it.

Sample Data

ID | Name | Education
1 | John Doe | [education][school]Mayer High School[/school][year]2000[/year][degree]HS Diploma[/degree][/education][education][school]River Technical College[/school][year]2004[/year][degree]Bachelors Degree[/degree][/education]

Problem

So in my Edit page, users need to be able to edit their name and their Education info. I can't figure out the best way to turn into a form that would look like this:

Edit Page
Name: [ John Doe ]

Education 1
School: [ Mayer High School ] Graduated: [ 2000 ] Degree: [ HS Diploma ]

Education 2
School: [ River Technical College ] Graduated: [ 2004 ] Degree: [ Bachelors Degree ]

+ Add Another Degree

[-SAVE-]

My main concern is how to break the data up into the fields I need them to be in, and when the user edits any of the fields, how do I bring the data back together to go back into the table in the original format.

Any help and guidance is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jay

YAOMK

you may want to consider using regular expressions for this task. Take a look at preg_match().

NogDog

Is there a particular reason you are stuck with using this non-standard way of storing and manipulating data instead of using a database, or at least using an XML file?

corpking

Thanks, I'm looking into preg_match.

The reason we're storing the data that way is because the profiles have a bunch of data subsets (education, work history, etc). This is a quick and dirty way to store the data, knowing it'll need to be updated, but not too often.

laserlight

The reason we're storing the data that way is because the profiles have a bunch of data subsets (education, work history, etc). This is a quick and dirty way to store the data, knowing it'll need to be updated, but not too often.

Instead of inventing yet another data storage/description format, use an existing one. XML sounds reasonable, since you are effectively simulating its syntax with square brackets, and yet introducing proprietary data format syntax that you have to account for in addition to the XML-like data parsing.

On the other hand, it looks like you do not necessarily have tree structures, but tabular structures. Instead of going by a "quick and dirty" method and having to spend lots of time cleaning up later, a good relational database design may be better in the long run.

corpking

That's good thinking. How would I go about storing XML in a field and retrieving / parsing the data? I've searched up and down online and can't find anything that sheds light on this. Thanks.

Jay

Horizon88

From the demo you posted, a regular ol' database would be the best solution for you, not XML. If you use XML you're still using a single file for each user, or a huge file for all the users. If you set up a relational database (mySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) you can have a nice, neat, fast database that's easy to update and maintain. With your current setup, what happens if you need to change re-index id numbers or something?

/shivers

NogDog

While I would still recommend a RDBMS database solution (e.g. MySQL), if you go the XML route you can at least use PHP's built-in [man]SimpleXML[/man] functions to parse and manipulate your XML files rather than reinventing the wheel with your own proprietary scheme.

corpking

I should've probably been clearer. All the user records are in MySQL table, i.e. user_id, name, education, job_history, etc. But instead of branching out into child tables for education, and job_history, we're just storing the data chunk in the [field]data[/field] format in the table fields.

corpking

NogDog- Can I use SimpleXML to parse the XML formatted data that I pull from a table?

laserlight

Can I use SimpleXML to parse the XML formatted data that I pull from a table?

Of course, but why store it in the table in the first place? You might as well store it in normal text files. If you want to use a relational database, use it properly, so instead of involving XML, design your database to at least third normal form.

corpking

Ack, I'm giving up on the delimited formatting and creating the additional necessary tables. Thanks for y'alls help.

Horizon88

No problem - don't forget to mark this resolved if it works out for you 😉