PHP: Custom parser for non-formatted text - php

Question

I am trying to create a project which will help students study various areas. The idea is that I have a piece of raw text, which contains quiz questions and answers which I want to parse as question header and answer options, which will be inserted into a database. However, the text is not properly formatted and due to the large amount of questions and answers (around ~20k per total), I cannot afford the time to manually insert them or format the text myself.
The raw text looks like this:
1. A car averages 27 miles per gallon. If gas costs $4.04 per gallon, which of the following is closest to how much the gas would cost for this car to travel 2,727 typical miles?
a) $44.44 b) $109.08 c) $118.80
d) $408.04 e)
$444.40
2. When x = 3 and y = 5, by how much does the value of 3x2 – 2y exceed the value of 2x2 – 3y ?
a) 4
b) 14
c) 16
d) 20 e) 50
I tried creating my own PHP functions to parse the text properly, however I cannot get myself to get past the random line breaks, spaces, etc.
What I am trying to obtain:
array(1) {
[0]=>
array(3) {
["questionNumber"]=>
string(1) "1"
["questionText"]=>
string(175) "A car averages 27 miles per gallon. If gas costs $4.04 per gallon, which of the following is closest to how much the gas would cost for this car to travel 2,727 typical miles?"
["options"]=>
array(5) {
["a"]=>
string(6) "$44.44"
["b"]=>
string(7) "$109.08"
["c"]=>
string(7) "$118.80"
["d"]=>
string(7) "$408.04"
["e"]=>
string(7) "$444.40"
}
}
}
The code I have so far:
$rawText = '1. A car averages 27 miles per gallon. If gas costs $4.04 per gallon, which of the following is closest to how much the gas would cost for this car to travel 2,727 typical miles?
a) $44.44 b) $109.08 c) $118.80
d) $408.04 e)
$444.40
2. When x = 3 and y = 5, by how much does the value of 3x2 – 2y exceed the value of 2x2 – 3y ?
a) 4
b) 14
c) 16
d) 20 e) 50
';
$rawTextLines = explode("\n", $rawText);
foreach ($rawTextLines as $lineNumber => $lineContents) {
$lContents = trim($lineContents);
if (empty ($lContents)) {
unset ($rawTextLines[$lineNumber]);
} else {
$rawTextLines[$lineNumber] = $lContents;
}
}
$processedQuestions = array ();
$currentQuestionHeader = 0;
foreach ($rawTextLines as $lineNumber => $lineContents) {
if (ctype_digit(substr($lineContents, 0, 1))) { // Question header
$questionHeaderInformation = explode('.', $lineContents);
$currentQuestionHeader = $questionHeaderInformation[0];
$processedQuestions[$currentQuestionHeader]['questionNumber'] = $currentQuestionHeader;
$processedQuestions[$currentQuestionHeader]['questionText'] = $questionHeaderInformation[1];
} else { // Question option
$options = explode(')', $lineContents);
if (count ($options) % 2 === 0) {
$processedQuestions[$currentQuestionHeader]['options'][trim($options[0])] = ucfirst(trim($options[1]));
} else {
}
}
}
Which produces this:
array(2) {
[1]=>
array(3) {
["questionNumber"]=>
string(1) "1"
["questionText"]=>
string(35) " A car averages 27 miles per gallon"
["options"]=>
array(1) {
["a"]=>
string(8) "$44.44 b"
}
}
[2]=>
array(3) {
["questionNumber"]=>
string(1) "2"
["questionText"]=>
string(96) " When x = 3 and y = 5, by how much does the value of 3x2 – 2y exceed the value of 2x2 – 3y ?"
["options"]=>
array(3) {
["a"]=>
string(1) "4"
["b"]=>
string(2) "14"
["c"]=>
string(2) "16"
}
}
}
As you can see, the current output does not match - not by far, what I am trying to obtain.
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Hellow,
^[0-9]+\. (.*)[\r\n]+a\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+b\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+c\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+d\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+e\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]*
Try it !
$re = '/^[0-9]+\. (.*)[\r\n]+a\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+b\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+c\)[\s]+(.*) [\s]+d\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]+e\)[\s]+(.*)[\s]*/m';
$str = '1. A car averages 27 miles per gallon. If gas costs $4.04 per gallon, which of the following is closest to how much the gas would cost for this car to travel 2,727 typical miles?
a) $44.44 b) $109.08 c) $118.80
d) $408.04 e)
$444.40
2. When x = 3 and y = 5, by how much does the value of 3x2 – 2y exceed the value of 2x2 – 3y ?
a) 4
b) 14
c) 16
d) 20 e) 50';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);