[RESOLVED] Extracting Specific String (maybe regex?) Help

kbc1

I retrieve a string of data from a database and store the string into my $xml variable. The string mimics a node from an XML file.

I have provided a typical example of what one of the strings could look like below:

$xml = '<question><id="1" answer="|~start~|text one|~end~||~start~|text two|~end~||~start~|text three|~end~||~start~|text four|~end~|" timecheck="267"></question>'

Now, when a user submits a HTML form, all of the form field data is stored into the answer element of the $xml node and is separated by my own delimiters explained below.

The start delimiter is |~start~|
The end delimiter is |~end~|

...and I need help to store the content between every occurrance of these delimiters into an array.

Can some guru out there offer help and explain/provide code on how to do this? I think it will be done with preg_match but this is not an area I am very knowledgeable in im afraid.

For guidance, from the above example, I hope to have the following array outputted:

Array
(
    [0] => text one
    [1] => text two
    [2] => text three
    [3] => text four
)

Many Thanks for reading

sneakyimp

this should work on a single question xml:


$pattern = '#\|~start~\|(.+?)\|~end~\|#';
$matches = NULL;
if (preg_match_all($pattern, $xml, $matches)) {
  print_r($matches);
} else {
  echo 'there were no matches';
}

You would probably need to parse the xml so you can search each question individually.

bradgrafelman

kbc1;10911410 wrote:
The string mimics a node from an XML file.

Yes, but it does so very, very poorly (practically negating the advantages of using XML format to store data).

Do you control how this text is generated? If so, why in the world didn't you do something like:

<question id="1" timecheck="267">
	<answer>text one</answer>
	<answer>text two</answer>
	<answer>text three</answer>
	<answer>text four</answer>
</question>

kbc1

Thanks for the help people!

bradgrafelman, on the back of what you said regarding the XML structure. If I was to structure the data like that, how would you loop through each answer node and extract the contents of those nodes into an array?

That would be very helpful if you can offer some advice.

Thank you

kbc1

I have found a solution with SimpleXML.

For those who are intersted, I changed my xml structure to match that of bradgrafelman suggestion and used the following PHP code to parse the XML nodes:


$xmlanswer = "<question id="1" timecheck="267">
	<answer>text one</answer>
	<answer>text two</answer>
	<answer>text three</answer>
	<answer>text four</answer>
</question>";

$string		=	"<?xml version='1.0'?><parentnode>" . $xmlanswer . "</parentnode>";
$root 		= simplexml_load_string($string); 

foreach ($root->question as $question) {
	$questionid		=	 $question['id'];
	$timecheck		=	 $question['timecheck'];

foreach($question as $answer) {
	$answertext		=	$answer;
}
}