capturing particular string and values from a php string - php

Question

I have a variable in php that has the following value:
var $line="'PHYSICAL':3.8,'ORGANIZATIONAL':4,'TECHNICAL':2.9";
From that line variable, I want to extract each word and values in php, so basically I want something like below:
var $word1=PHYSICAL;
var $word1value=3.8;
var $word2=ORGANIZATIONAL;
var $word2value=4;
var $word3=TECHNICAL;
var $word3value=2.9;
I want to capture all the words and values separately in different variables, so that later I can process them. Can anyone please assist me on this. Thanks.

Answer 1

The simplest way to do this is with preg_split. You can use the PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE flag to enable capturing the word without the surrounding quotes, and PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY to remove the empty values that arise from this particular split pattern.
$line="'PHYSICAL':3.8,'ORGANIZATIONAL':4,'TECHNICAL':2.9";
$array = preg_split("/'([^']+)':|,/", $line, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($array);
Output:
Array
(
[0] => PHYSICAL
[1] => 3.8
[2] => ORGANIZATIONAL
[3] => 4
[4] => TECHNICAL
[5] => 2.9
)
You can then post-process the array (for example using array_filter and array_combine) to produce something which might be more useful:
$newarray = array_combine(array_filter($array, function ($i) { return !($i % 2); }, ARRAY_FILTER_USE_KEY),
array_filter($array, function ($i) { return $i % 2; }, ARRAY_FILTER_USE_KEY));
print_r($newarray);
Output:
Array
(
[PHYSICAL] => 3.8
[ORGANIZATIONAL] => 4
[TECHNICAL] => 2.9
)
If you really want the individual variables you can do this:
for ($i = 0; $i < count($array); $i += 2) {
${'word' . intdiv($i+2, 2)} = $array[$i];
${'word' . intdiv($i+2, 2) . 'value'} = $array[$i+1];
}
echo "word1 = $word1\n";
echo "word1value = $word1value\n";
echo "word2 = $word2\n";
echo "word2value = $word2value\n";
echo "word3 = $word3\n";
echo "word3value = $word3value\n";
Output:
word1 = PHYSICAL
word1value = 3.8
word2 = ORGANIZATIONAL
word2value = 4
word3 = TECHNICAL
word3value = 2.9