PHP/MYSQL/JSON: Parse complicated string or reassemble as dictionary - php

Question

I receive a complicate string through JSON that represents an object:
<Offers: 0x170483070> (entity: Offers; id: 0xd00000000b880006 <x-
coredata://03C4A684-2218-489C-9EF6-42634ED10552/Offers/p738> ; data: {\\n
topic = nil;\\n topid = 9403;\\n hasserverid = nil;\\n isprivate = nil;\\n
lasttouched = \\\"2018-07-08 16:49:01 +0000\\\";\\n lastviewed = nil;\\n
localid = 42;\\n needpicsync = nil;\\n needsync = nil;\\n secondorder
= 0;\\n oid = 0;\\n offer = test;\\n offerdone = nil;\\n offernumber =
70;\\n userid = 1;\\n wasdeleted = nil;\\n whenadded = \\\"2018-07-08
16:04:20 +0000\\\”;\\n})
I would like to save certain things to MYSQL. In the above example, I would like to save the fields offer and offernumber among others to a record with something like:
$sql = "INSERT into offers (offer,offernumber) VALUES ('test',70)";
To do this, of course, I first have to parse the string to get the value for offer, the one for offer number and ideally, the keys and values for the entire object.
Should I first convert the string into some sort of array,dictionary or data structure? Or should I try to parse the string using regex or some other method? If the latter, would appreciate suggestions on what what regex or technique to use.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Answer 1

You can try to convert the string into a object with PHP,
this may help you:
$input = "**The input string**";
// Remove the escaped new lines
$jsonString = str_replace("\\n", "\n", substr($input, strpos($input, "data: ")+5));
$jsonString = substr($jsonString, 0, strlen($jsonString) - 1);
// Convert the equals, semicolons and remove the escaped backslash
$jsonString = str_replace(";", ",", $jsonString);
$jsonString = str_replace("=", ":", $jsonString);
$jsonString = str_replace('\\', '', $jsonString);
$matches = array();
// Use regex to get json key-value
if(preg_match_all('/(\w+)\s*\:\s*(.+)\s*\,/m', $jsonString, $matches,PREG_SET_ORDER, 0)){
// Iterate the matches and enclose key and value into double quotes
foreach($matches as $item){
// Enclose the value if isn't a number or a date
if(strpos(trim($item[2]), '"') !== 0 && !is_numeric($item[2])){
$item[2] = '"'.$item[2].'"';
}
// Replace in json string
$jsonString = str_replace($item[0], '"'.$item[1].'"'.' : '.$item[2].',', $jsonString);
}
}
// Remove last comma
$jsonString = substr($jsonString, 0, strlen($jsonString) - 3) . '}';
// Transform json string to object
$jsonObject = json_decode($jsonString);
// Show the json string
echo($jsonString);
// Display the object
var_dump($jsonObject);
the above code convert the given string to an object and then you can use the properties as you need.
you can try this here: PHP Sandbox