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I am getting started with php, and I was wondering if it was possible to explode a string into an array with named variables. The set up is that I have some data I am reading in from a text file, and I want to break it up into rows first and then break it up into individual pieces of data.

 Data1  |  Data2  |  Data3  |
 ----------------------------
|   x   |    y    |    z    |
|   p   |    q    |    r    |

So I am trying to end up with something like:

data {
   row1 {
       data1: x
       data2: y
       data3: z
   row2 {
       data1: p
       data2: q
       data3: r
   }
}

and I would like be able to access the data using the names of the variables if possible:

$r1d1 = data[row1]['data1'];

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2  
look into associative arrays. – Matt K Mar 1 at 18:03
there is no built in function but you can do it manually. What have you done so far? – Your Common Sense Mar 1 at 18:06
What is the exact structure of your data in the file? You've got some options, such as storing the data in already parsable way, like JSON / XML, or parse it with regular expressions and explodes – Alex Mar 1 at 18:35
@Col.Shrapnel There is a built in function named extract – ehime Mar 1 at 18:44
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

If you want to explode a string into an associative array, you can use the list function.

// Initialize data_list
$data_list = array();

// Remove delimiter at start and end of string
$string = trim('|   x   |    y    |    z    |', '|');

$data = array();
list($data['data1'],$data['data2'],$data['data3']) = explode('|',$string);

$data_list[] = $data;

You would want to have it wrapped into a foreach loop to process each line of the file. In the end the $data_list would contain all the data.

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up vote -1 down vote

You can extract them PHP Extract()

extract($your_array, EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, 'prefix_if_needed');

then use

    echo '<pre>'; 
      var_export(array_diff(get_defined_vars(), array(array())));  
    echo'</pre>';

To see your new variable names ;)

Hope this helps.

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up vote 0 down vote

Explanation by code

<?php

// data to convert
$string = '| Data1  |  Data2  |  Data3  |
 ----------------------------
|   x   |    y    |    z    |
|   p   |    q    |    r    |';

// container to collect data in
$data = array();

// split the string into lines
$lines = explode("\n", $string);
// pull first line from the array
$names = array_shift($lines);
// remove delimiters from beginning and end
$names = trim($names, '| ');
// split at | while ignoring spaces and empty results
$names = preg_split('/\s*\|\s*/', $names);
// remove --------------- line
array_shift($lines);
// walk remaining lines
foreach ($lines as $line) {
    // container to collect data of row in
    $row = array();
    // remove delimiters from beginning and end
    $line = trim($line, '| ');
    // split at |
    $line = explode('|', $line);
    foreach ($line as $i => $value) {
        // identify key by looking up in $names
        $key = $names[$i];
        // remove spaces
        $row[$key] = trim($value);
    }
    // add row to data set
    $data[] = $row;
}

var_dump($data);

will result in

$data = array(
    0 => array(
        'Data1' => 'x',
        'Data2' => 'y',
        'Data3' => 'z',
    ),
    1 => array(
        'Data1' => 'p',
        'Data2' => 'q',
        'Data3' => 'r',
    ),
);
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