Help with regex please :(

NuMan

okay this is my variables.php:

<?php
$line1 = '1';
$name = 'name';
$line2 = '2';
?>

And this is my do.php

<?php
$new = $_POST['newname'];
$file = file_get_contents('variables.php');
$file = str_replace("'name'", "'$new'", $file);
file_put_contents('variables.php', $file);
?>

What im trying to do is change the variable $name = 'name'; by running do.php, And this code works fine. But the problem is that after i run it for the 1st time it won't work again because the variable wouldn't equal name anymore, since i've changed it and therefore i need to use regex to change whatever is inside the string $name. Any help with this please? would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Drakla

Could you actually post the intentions you have by doing this, as this seems like a really freaky way of doing things unless I'm not getting it. And of course $new will contain the value that $name is pointing to now, without the single quotes that it will have in the file.

nrg_alpha

My first immediate question is: is it necessary for your variables.php page to be php? In otherwords, can it be a simple text file?

What I have done in the past is create a simple text file with some variables, but I wanted the return carriage / newlines involved (you'll see why in a second).. so I would type out the first variable, hit enter, type in the second variable, hit enter, etc.. once all done.. save the file..(as either .txt or .ini or whatever) then in php open the file using file(). This opens the file contents as an array.

Then, if your name variable is the first variable, assign the first array (array[0]) to you new name, then implode the array back into a string and use file_put_contents (like you have done), and viola!

This way, you can keep opneing the file, tap into the array key you need, assign it to your php value, then re-implode, save and close.. fast, easy, and trouble free..

Just one thing.. be sure when you assign your variable to include "\r\n" at the end. This re-embeds the newline into your array element.. this way, once its imploded, you have the \r\n as a delimiter for file() to work properly with.

Just a though..

Cheers,

NRG

NuMan

nrg_alpha;10884217 wrote:
My first immediate question is: is it necessary for your variables.php page to be php? In otherwords, can it be a simple text file?

What I have done in the past is create a simple text file with some variables, but I wanted the return carriage / newlines involved (you'll see why in a second).. so I would type out the first variable, hit enter, type in the second variable, hit enter, etc.. once all done.. save the file..(as either .txt or .ini or whatever) then in php open the file using file(). This opens the file contents as an array.

Then, if your name variable is the first variable, assign the first array (array[0]) to you new name, then implode the array back into a string and use file_put_contents (like you have done), and viola!

This way, you can keep opneing the file, tap into the array key you need, assign it to your php value, then re-implode, save and close.. fast, easy, and trouble free..

Just one thing.. be sure when you assign your variable to include "\r\n" at the end. This re-embeds the newline into your array element.. this way, once its imploded, you have the \r\n as a delimiter for file() to work properly with.

Just a though..

Cheers,

NRG

Would you be so kind of giving me a example of this?:o

nrg_alpha

Ok.. so suppose you had a text file like this:

name
code1
code2

code1 and code2 can be whatever...

so in php, you tell it what file and where it is, then use file() to extract the contents as an array... manipulate say name (first entry in file), then implode back into string and save / close.. so say in your phpo file, you have a variable $name that you want to put into the fie...

Example:

$name = 'Johnnie';
$file_ini = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/whatever folder/whatever_file.ini';
if(file_exists($file_ini)){
   $fileContents = file($file_ini);
   $fileContents[0] = $name . "\r\n"; // this is the name you want to replace..
   $str = implode('', $fileContents);
   file_put_contents($file_ini, $str);
   unset($fileContents, $str);
} else {
   echo "Error! The file you are looking for does not exist!";
   exit;
}

Now I have had to manipulate all array key values in my project, so I overwrote each key one at a time, ensuring I added "\r\n" at the end of each, then the rest is the same (implode and save).

Granted, I suppose instead of going the array route, you could always have your file as a string with not just the variable info, but some additional info that is just there to help regex find it..

for example:

name: NULL codeOne: code1 codeTwo: code2

then access the file (instead of file(), simply use file_get_contents() to load contents as a string. From there, you simply use regex to replace a portion of it, then simply save and close it via file_put_contents().

example:

$name = 'Johnnie'; //name to insert into file...
$file_ini = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/whatever folder/whatever_file.ini';
if(file_exists($file_ini)){
   $str = file_get_contents($file_ini);					
   $str = preg_replace('#(?<=name:\s)(\w+)#', "$name", $str);
   file_put_contents($file_ini, $str); 
} else {
   echo "Error! The file you are looking for does not exist!";
   exit;
}

Just a few assumptions with the regex patter..

the space in the look behind assertion (\s) actually can be many whitespaces, such as space, tab, etc.. if you need to explicitly list a space character only, you can use '\x20' instead. The group for capture (\w+) assumes the characters in the name is only comprised of [a-zA-Z0-9_].. so if more characters is needed, then use a single character class than encompasses what you need.

So going the regex route on a string, you don't have to fuss with any new lines or the like.. If you want to make either of those code snippets fully useful, just have them as a function which when called, loops through all the variables in the file and overwrite them all in one fell swoop.

Sorry for the long post. Hope this helped out.

Drakla

Wouldn't you be better off using a real ini file and using [man]parse_ini_file[/man] as the order of variables then becomes unimportant, it's user readable and editable. A lot less faff.

nrg_alpha

See? I learn something new everyday.. I wasn't aware of the parse_ini_file function. So yep, had I known that, I would have went with that instead 🙂

(Good thing I participate in these threads.. to risk looking like an idiot is equal to the opportunity of learning not to code like one 😉 )

NuMan

nrg_alpha;10884369 wrote:
Ok.. so suppose you had a text file like this:
name
code1
code2
code1 and code2 can be whatever...

so in php, you tell it what file and where it is, then use file() to extract the contents as an array... manipulate say name (first entry in file), then implode back into string and save / close.. so say in your phpo file, you have a variable $name that you want to put into the fie...

Example:
$name = 'Johnnie';
$file_ini = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/whatever folder/whatever_file.ini';
if(file_exists($file_ini)){
   $fileContents = file($file_ini);
   $fileContents[0] = $name . "\r\n"; // this is the name you want to replace..
   $str = implode('', $fileContents);
   file_put_contents($file_ini, $str);
   unset($fileContents, $str);
} else {
   echo "Error! The file you are looking for does not exist!";
   exit;
}
Now I have had to manipulate all array key values in my project, so I overwrote each key one at a time, ensuring I added "\r\n" at the end of each, then the rest is the same (implode and save).

Granted, I suppose instead of going the array route, you could always have your file as a string with not just the variable info, but some additional info that is just there to help regex find it..

for example:
name: NULL codeOne: code1 codeTwo: code2
then access the file (instead of file(), simply use file_get_contents() to load contents as a string. From there, you simply use regex to replace a portion of it, then simply save and close it via file_put_contents().

example:
$name = 'Johnnie'; //name to insert into file...
$file_ini = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/whatever folder/whatever_file.ini';
if(file_exists($file_ini)){
   $str = file_get_contents($file_ini);					
   $str = preg_replace('#(?<=name:\s)(\w+)#', "$name", $str);
   file_put_contents($file_ini, $str); 
} else {
   echo "Error! The file you are looking for does not exist!";
   exit;
}	
Just a few assumptions with the regex patter..

the space in the look behind assertion (\s) actually can be many whitespaces, such as space, tab, etc.. if you need to explicitly list a space character only, you can use '\x20' instead. The group for capture (\w+) assumes the characters in the name is only comprised of [a-zA-Z0-9_].. so if more characters is needed, then use a single character class than encompasses what you need.

So going the regex route on a string, you don't have to fuss with any new lines or the like.. If you want to make either of those code snippets fully useful, just have them as a function which when called, loops through all the variables in the file and overwrite them all in one fell swoop.

Sorry for the long post. Hope this helped out.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!! this WORKED FINE:

<?php
$name = '$name';
$new = $_POST['newname']; 
$file_ini = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'variables.ini'; 
if(file_exists($file_ini)){ 
   $fileContents = file($file_ini); 
   $fileContents[1] = $name ."="." "."'". $new ."'".";" . "\r\n"; // this is the name you want to replace..
   $str = implode('', $fileContents); 
   file_put_contents($file_ini, $str); 
   unset($fileContents, $str); 
} else { 
   echo "Error! The file you are looking for does not exist!"; 
   exit; 
}
?>

THANKS AGAIN!