php: exploding strings

Question

I am trying to get a simple array from a string.

Ej. [position] => ???? [ heading] => ??? [ pitch] => ??? [ zoom] => ???

But for some reason I get the following error:

Notice: Undefined index: heading on line 21

Here is the PHP code:

<?php
$mysql_data= 
"position: 34.032616, -118.286564|
heading: -159.50240187408838|
pitch: 0|
zoom: 2";


$pov = explode("|", $mysql_data);
foreach($pov as $key)
{
    $element = explode(": ", $key);
    $pov[ $element[0] ] = $element[1];
}
unset($element);


//Testing echoes
print_r($pov);
echo "\n";
echo $pov['heading'];
?>

Also, is there a simpler way to do this in a single go and skip foreach all together?
BTW: I do not need key's 0,1..etc, only labeled ones like 'heading','zoom',etc

I've updated my answer to include a regular expression that solves the same problem with less hacks than parse_str() :)

bsdnoobz · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-04 04:04:47Z

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Simpler way to do it without foreach(), assuming that there are no newlines in the input string:

$str = 'position: 34.032616, -118.286564|heading: -159.50240187408838|pitch: 0|zoom: 2';
$str = str_replace(array('|',':'), array('&','='), $mysql_data);

parse_str($str, $pov);

print_r($pov);
/*
Array
(
    [position] =>  34.032616, -118.286564
    [heading] =>  -159.50240187408838
    [pitch] =>  0
    [zoom] =>  2
)
*/

If there are newlines in the input string, change the rules in the str_replace args.

str_replace(array("\r\n","\n",'|',':'), array('','','&','='), $mysql_data);

edited Jun 4 '12 at 4:04

answered Jun 4 '12 at 2:58

bsdnoobz
5,8822629

	is there any difference between `$mysql_data = trim($mysql_data);` and adding `\n` to the `str_replace()` function? – Omar Jun 4 '12 at 3:58
	`trim()` will remove the whitespaces from both ends of `$mysql_data`. While the code above doesn't really care with whitespaces. It just converts the string to array the way you want. – bsdnoobz Jun 4 '12 at 4:02
	I had no idea you could use str_replace in combination with arrays :O I learned a new thing today. BTW, Thank you! Your answer covers both of my questions and a bit more =) – Omar Jun 4 '12 at 4:16

Jack · Answer 2 · 2012-06-04 06:06:48Z

There's a newline in front of heading.

Inside your loop you should trim() the array key (and value just in case):

$pov[ trim($element[0]) ] = trim($element[1]);

Update

A simple regular expression will also take care of this:

$s = <<<EOM
position: 34.032616, -118.286564|
heading: -159.50240187408838|
pitch: 0|
zoom: 2
EOM;

if (preg_match_all('/(\w+):([^|]+)/', $s, $matches)) {
    $pov = array_combine($matches[1], $matches[2]);
}

Btw: don't use parse_str hacks, that function is meant for data that's already properly URL encoded and quite honestly is the wrong tool for the job.

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php: exploding strings

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