Extract time within parentheses using PHP - php

Question

This is my first time using the trim function and I want to get the Time excluding the open and close parenthesis of my string. Can you give me hints and suggestions on how to do this?
$string = "Updated by Carewina Almonte (04/02/2018 21:58:32)";
echo trim($string, "Updated by Carewina Almonte (04/02/2018");
exit();

Answer 1

In php, You can do get this and this works if and only if date and time always appears at the end of string -
$string = "Updated by Carewina Almonte (04/02/2018 21:58:32)";
$time = substr($string,-9,8);
echo $time;

Answer 2

$string = "Updated by Carewina Almonte (04/02/2018 21:58:32)";
if(preg_match("/\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}/", $string , $match))
{
echo $match[0];
}
Regular expression should be used in this case.

Answer 3

You can use preg_match for this task:
$str = 'Updated by Carewina Almonte (04/02/2018 21:58:32)';
preg_match('/(?<=\(\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4} ).*(?=\))/', $str, $match);
echo $match[0];
Breakdown:
Positive Lookbehind (?<=\(). Assert that the Regex below matches:
\( matches the character ( literally (case sensitive)
.* matches any character (except for line terminators)
* Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
\d{2} matches a digit (equal to [0-9])
{2} Quantifier — Matches exactly 2 times
\/ matches the character / literally (case sensitive)
Positive Lookahead (?=\)). Assert that the Regex below matches:
\) matches the character ) literally (case sensitive)

Answer 4

For you example string you might match what is between parenthesis using \(\K[^)]+(?=\)).
This will match an opening parenthesis \( and then use \K to reset the starting point of the reported match.
After that match NOT a closing parenthesis one or more times [^)]+ and a positive lookahead to assert that what follows is a closing parenthesis (?=\)).
Then you could create a DateTime using or use DateTime::createFromFormat using $matches[0] and extract the time:
$re = '/\(\K[^)]+(?=\))/';
$str = 'Updated by Carewina Almonte (04/02/2018 21:58:32)';
preg_match($re, $str, $matches);
$dateTime = new DateTime($matches[0]);
if ($dateTime !== false) {
echo $dateTime->format('H:i:s');
}
Test