RegEx for capturing digits in a string (PHP) - php

I am pulling in job numbers and matching them to data in a mysql database, then retrieving the matching data.
If my job number is 123456 then it matches up fine and I get results.
Some are 123-456 some are 12-text, while some are 12-text-345
$variable = $variable
I tried matching the variable but that's what's not effective.
I tried changing the SQL within PHPMyAdmin and it doesn't even work smoothly there.
I googled and think I should be using RegExp. I tried. I can add a slash and make it work on individual items, however, I do not know where the hyphen will be amidst a massive array. It might be the third or fourth character.
I tried pregmatch but I don't think I know what I'm doing with that.
I'm looking for a few lines of code to analyze a PHP variable and both detect and escape any meta characters if there are any. A tutorial link would be fine too, I appreciate any assistance

Here, if we wish to only get the numbers, on way would be to collect our digits in a capturing group and then collect everything else, then replace it with just $1, with an expression similar to:
(\d+)|\D+
Test
$re = '/(\d+)|\D+/m';
$str = 'text-12-text-345';
$subst = '$1';
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo $result;
Output
12345
DEMO

Related

How to remove repeated sequence of characters in a string?

Imagine if:
$string = "abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcd";
How do I remove the repeated sequence of characters (all characters, not just alphabets) in the string so that the new string would only have "abcd"? Perhaps running a function that returns a new string with removed repetitions.
$new_string = remove_repetitions($string);
The possible string before removing the repetition is always like above. I don’t know how else to explain since English is not my first language. Other examples are,
$string = “EqhabEqhabEqhabEqhabEqhab”;
$string = “o=98guo=98guo=98gu”;
Note that I want it to work with other sequence of characters as well. I tried using Regex but I couldn't figure out a way to accomplish it. I am still new to php and Regex.
For details : https://algorithms.tutorialhorizon.com/remove-duplicates-from-the-string/
In different programming have a different way to remove the same or duplicate character from a string.
Example: In PHP
<?php
$str = "Hello World!";
echo count_chars($str,3);
?>
OutPut : !HWdelor
https://www.w3schools.com/php/func_string_count_chars.asp
Here, if we wish to remove the repeating substrings, I can't think of a way other than knowing what we wish to collect since the patterns seem complicated.
In that case, we could simply use a capturing group and add our desired output in it the remove everything else:
(abcd|Eqhab|guo=98)
I'm guessing it should be simpler way to do this though.
Test
$re = '/.+?(abcd|Eqhab|guo=98)\1.+/m';
$str = 'abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcd
EqhabEqhabEqhabEqhabEqhab
o98guo=98guo=98guo=98guo=98guo=98guo=98guo98';
$subst = '$1';
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo $result;
Demo
You did not tell what exactly to remove. A "sequnece of characters" can be as small as just 1 character.
So this simple regex should work
preg_replace ( '/(.)(?=.*?\1)/g','' 'abcdabcdabcdabcdabcdabcd');

preg_replace - similar patterns

I have a string that contains something like "LAB_FF, LAB_FF12" and I'm trying to use preg_replace to look for both patterns and replace them with different strings using a pattern match of;
/LAB_[0-9A-F]{2}|LAB_[0-9A-F]{4}/
So input would be
LAB_FF, LAB_FF12
and the output would need to be
DAB_FF, HAD_FF12
Problem is, for the second string, it interprets it as "LAB_FF" instead of "LAB_FF12" and so the output is
DAB_FF, DAB_FF
I've tried splitting the input line out using 2 different preg_match statements, the first looking for the {2} pattern and the second looking for the {4} pattern. This sort of works in that I can get the correct output into 2 separate strings but then can't combine the two strings to give the single amended output.
\b is word boundary. Meaning it will look at where the word ends and not only pattern match.
https://regex101.com/r/upY0gn/1
$pattern = "/\bLAB_[0-9A-F]{2}\b|\bLAB_[0-9A-F]{4}\b/";
Seeing the comment on the other answer about how to replace the string.
This is one way.
The pattern will create empty entries in the output array for each pattern that fails.
In this case one (the first).
Then it's just a matter of substr.
$re = '/(\bLAB_[0-9A-F]{2}\b)|(\bLAB_[0-9A-F]{4}\b)/';
$str = 'LAB_FF12';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches);
var_dump($matches);
$substitutes = ["", "DAB", "HAD"];
For($i=1; $i<count($matches); $i++){
If($matches[$i] != ""){
$result = $substitutes[$i] . substr($matches[$i],3);
Break;
}
}
Echo $result;
https://3v4l.org/gRvHv
You can specify exact amounts in one set of curly braces, e.g. `{2,4}.
Just tested this and seems to work:
/LAB_[0-9A-F]{2,4}/
LAB_FF, LAB_FFF, LAB_FFFF
EDIT: My mistake, that actually matches between 2 and 4. If you change the order of your selections it matches the first it comes to, e.g.
/LAB_([0-9A-F]{4}|[0-9A-F]{2})/
LAB_FF, LAB_FFFF
EDIT2: The following will match LAB_even_amount_of_characters:
/LAB_([0-9A-F]{2})+/
LAB_FF, LAB_FFFF, LAB_FFFFFF...

How to get a number from a html source page?

I'm trying to retrieve the followed by count on my instagram page. I can't seem to get the Regex right and would very much appreciate some help.
Here's what I'm looking for:
y":{"count":
That's the beginning of the string, and I want the 4 numbers after that.
$string = preg_replace("{y"\"count":([0-9]+)\}","",$code);
Someone suggested this ^ but I can't get the formatting right...
You haven't posted your strings so it is a guess to what the regex should be... so I'll answer on why your codes fail.
preg_replace('"followed_by":{"count":\d')
This is very far from the correct preg_replace usage. You need to give it the replacement string and the string to search on. See http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-replace.php
Your second usage:
$string = preg_replace(/^y":{"count[0-9]/","",$code);
Is closer but preg_replace is global so this is searching your whole file (or it would if not for the anchor) and will replace the found value with nothing. What your really want (I think) is to use preg_match.
$string = preg_match('/y":\{"count(\d{4})/"', $code, $match);
$counted = $match[1];
This presumes your regex was kind of correct already.
Per your update:
Demo: https://regex101.com/r/aR2iU2/1
$code = 'y":{"count:1234';
$string = preg_match('/y":\{"count:(\d{4})/', $code, $match);
$counted = $match[1];
echo $counted;
PHP Demo: https://eval.in/489436
I removed the ^ which requires the regex starts at the start of your string, escaped the { and made the\d be 4 characters long. The () is a capture group and stores whatever is found inside of it, in this case the 4 numbers.
Also if this isn't just for learning you should be prepared for this to stop working at some point as the service provider may change the format. The API is a safer route to go.
This regexp should capture value you're looking for in the first group:
\{"count":([0-9]+)\}
Use it with preg_match_all function to easily capture what you want into array (you're using preg_replace which isn't for retrieving data but for... well replacing it).
Your regexp isn't working because you didn't escaped curly brackets. And also you didn't put count quantifier (plus sign in my example) so it would only capture first digit anyway.

I need to find a way explode a specific string that has quotes in it

I'm having serious trouble with this and I'm not really experienced enough to understand how I should go about it.
To start off I have a very long string known as $VC. Each time it's slightly different but will always have some things that are the same.
$VC is an htmlspecialchars() string that looks something like
Example Link... Lots of other stuff in between here... 80] ,[] ,"","3245697351286309258",[] ,["812750926... and it goes on ...80] ,[] ,"","6057413202557366578",[] ,["103279554... and it continues on
In this case the <a> tag is always the same so I take my information from there. The numbers listed after it such as ,"3245697351286309258",[] and ,"6057413202557366578",[] will also always be in the same format, just different numbers and one of those numbers will always be a specific ID.
I then find that specific ID I want, I will always want that number inside pid%3D and %26oid.
$pid = explode("pid%3D", $VC, 2);
$pid = explode("%26oid", $pid[1], 2);
$pid = $pid[0];
In this case that number is 6057413202557366578. Next I want to explode $VC in a way that lets me put everything after ,"6057413202557366578",[] into a variable as its own string.
This is where things start to break down. What I want to do is the following
$vinfo = explode(',"'.$pid.'",[]',$VC,2);
$vinfo = $vinfo[1]; //Everything after the value I used to explode it.
Now naturally I did look around and try other things such as preg_split and preg_replace but I've got to admit, it is beyond me and as far as I can tell, those don't let you put your own variable in the middle of them (e.g. ',"'.$pid.'",[]').
If I'm understanding the whole regular expression idea, there might be other problems in that if I look for it without the $pid variable (e.g. just the surrounding characters), it will pick up the similar parts of the string before it gets to the one I want, (e.g. the ,"3245697351286309258",[]).
I hope I've explained this well enough, the main question though is - How can I get the information after that specific part of the string (',"'.$pid.'",[]') into a variable?
I hope this does what you want:
pid%3D(?P<id>\d+).*?"(?P=id)",\[\](?P<vinfo>.*?)}\);<\/script>
It captures the number after pid%3D in group id, and everything after "id",[] (until the next occurence of });</script>) in group vinfo.
Here's a demo with shortened text.
The problem of capturing more than you want is fixed using capture groups. You'll wrap part of a regular expression in parenthesis to capture it.
You can use preg_match_all to do more robust regular expression capture. You will get an array of things that contains matches to the string that matched the entire pattern plus a string with a partial match for each capture group you use. We'll start by capturing the parts of the string you want. There are no capture groups at this point:
$text = 'Example Link... Lots of other stuff in between here... 80] ,[] ,"","3245697351286309258",[] ,["812750926... and it goes on ...80] ,[] ,"","6057413202557366578",[] ,["103279554... and it continues on"';
$pattern = '/,"\\d+",\\[\\]/';
preg_match_all($pattern,
$text,
$out, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
echo $out[0][0]; //echo ,"3245697351286309258",[]
Now to get just the pids into a variable, you can add a capture group in your pattern. The capture group is done by adding parenthesis:
$text = ...
$pattern = '/,"(\\d+)",\\[\\]/'; // the \d+ match will be capture
preg_match_all($pattern,
$text,
$out, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$pids = $out[1];
echo $pids[0]; // echo 3245697351286309258
Notice the first (and only in this case) capture group is in $out[1] (which is an array). What we have captured is all the digits.
To capture everything else, assuming everything is between square brackets, you could match more and capture it. To address the question, we'll use two capture groups. The first will capture the digits and the second will capture everything matching square brackets and everything in between:
$text = ...;
$pattern = '/,"(\\d+)",\\[\\] ,(\\[.+?\\])/';
preg_match_all($pattern,
$text,
$out, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$pids = $out[1];
$contents = $out[2];
echo $pids[0] . "=" . $contents[0] ."\n";
echo $pids[1] . "=". $contents[1];

How to get text without some word (an ampersand issue)

I have a string like this: Hello #"user name". Where are you from, #"user name"?
I need to get the string between the " statements (user name), but I don't know how to do it.
I tried something like this /#("(.*)"|(.[^ ]*))\s*/ but it works wrong
First off, one possible regular expression that grabs the data you need is #"(.+?)", which matches any data within quotes preceded by #, and captures the data inside. Now that you've added the regex you've tried, I'm betting that the issue is that your expression is greedy: the regex engine tries to grab the longest match possible, so returns all of #"user name". Where are you from, #"user name". Adding the ? makes the expression lazy, so it will grab the shorter match.
Since you're interested in the content inside, I'm guessing that your final goal is to replace those strings with various types of user data dynamically, so one approach would be preg_replace_callback:
function user_data($matches) {
$key = $matches[1];
// return the user data for a $key like "user name"
}
$output = preg_replace_callback('/#"(.+?)"/', 'user_data', $input);
try looking at this: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strstr.php you might need to explode the white space after and get the first item from the array as well.
If there is only one #"..." per string, something like this should work
$matches = array();
preg_match("/#\"(.+?)\"/i", $inputstring, $matches);
echo($matches[1]);
Try this, if its not working, just escape " in pattern
/\#\&quote\;([\w\s]{0,})\&quote\;/

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