PHP - parsing javascript array using a preg_match()

Question

I have a problem with parsing a HTML page. There is a variable in javascript that I need to get it and put it into json format.

<script>
  var variable1 = "foo";
  var variable2 = "boo";
  var multipleArray = [
            {"var1":"1",
             "var2": [{
                 "var21":"Extra Lge",
                 "var22":"45923090470",
                 "var23": {"key1":"value1",
                           "key2":"value"}
                 }],
                 ...etc...
             }]
</script>

Is there any easy way, how to get var multipleArray and all keys and values ? I used preg_match()

preg_match("'var multipleArray = [\{.*?\}]'", $source, $matches );

But it returns $matches as empty array().

What i am doing wrong? My experence with reg.ex. is on level 0 :(

I'll be glad for any help :) Thank you so much :)

Answer 1

With th following pattern you should get the Array without the var multipleArray identifier.

preg_match('/\[(\{(.*)\})\]/', $source, $matches );

Now to get the key value pairs you have to parse it. Or if you want to have a quick, dirty and evil win you could do the following:

You use str_replace() to replace every ':' with '=>', '[{' with '[', '}]' with ']', '{' with '[', '}' with ']'.

With the result-string ($result) you do the following:

$result_array = null;
eval('$result_array = '.$result);

Now $result_array contains your Array.