Need some assistence with Regex (PHP) - php

Question

I'd like to parse txt files to HTML using preg_replace to add formatting.
The format of the file is like this :
09:19:49 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234567 Today is a beautiful day
1234568 Tomorrow will be even better
1234569 December is the best month of the year!
This should be treated as a group and parsed into a table, like :
<table>
<tr><td>09:19:49 13-12-15</td><td>Sunday</td><td>Hello World</td></tr>
<tr><td>1234567</td><td>(optional)</td><td>Today is a beautiful day</td></tr>
<tr><td>1234568</td><td>(optional)</td><td>Tomorrow will be even better</td></tr>
<tr><td>1234569</td><td>(optional)</td><td>December is the best month of the year!</td></tr>
</table>
For now, I'm using two separate preg_replacements, one for the first line (date) and a second one for the following ones, which can be just one or up to 100 or so. But, this file can contain other text as well, which needs to be ignored (as for the replacement), but if this line has more or less the same format (7 digits and some text) it gets formatted as well :
$file = preg_replace('~^\s*((\[.*\]){0,2}\d{1,2}:\d{2}:\d{2}(\[/.*\]){0,2})\s(\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{2}(\[/.*\]){0,2})\s+(?:\d{2}/\d{3}\s+|)(Monday|Tuesday|Wednesday|Thursday|Friday|Saturday|Sunday)\s+(.+)$~m', '<table class="file"><tr class="entry"><td class="time">$1 $4</td><td class="day">$6</td><td class="message">$7</td></tr>', $file);
$file = preg_replace('~^\s*(.{0,11}?)\s*((\[.+?\])?\d{7}(\[/.+?\])?)\s+(.+?)$~m', '<tr class="id"><td class="optional">$1</td><td class="id">$2</td><td class="message">$5</td></tr>', $file);
How to improve this? Like, if I have this content :
09:19:49 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234567 Today is a beautiful day
1234568 Tomorrow will be even better
1234569 December is the best month of the year!
Liverpool - WBA 2-2
1234570 This line should be ignored
19:29:59 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234571 Today is a beautiful day
1234572 Tomorrow will be even better
So, I'd like to catch and preg_replace only the first block and the last one, starting with time/date and some following lines, starting with a 7-digit ID.
So far, thanks for reading ;)

Answer 1

I think this accomplishes what you are trying to do.
There was one line that were unclear to me why it should be ignored:
1234570 This line should be ignored
This line meets the 7 digits and some text requirement.
The regex I came up with was:
/^(\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\h*\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}|\d{7})\h*([a-zA-Z]{3}day)?\h*(.+)/m
Here is a regex101 demo: https://regex101.com/r/qB0gH6/1
and in PHP usage:
$string = '09:19:49 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234567 Today is a beautiful day
1234568 Tomorrow will be even better
1234569 December is the best month of the year!
Liverpool - WBA 2-2
1234570 This line should be ignored
19:29:59 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234571 Today is a beautiful day
1234572 Tomorrow will be even better';
echo preg_replace('/^(\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\h*\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}|\d{7})\h*([a-zA-Z]{3}day)?\h*(.+)/m', '<td>$1</td><td>$2</td><td>$3</td>', $string);
Output:
<td>09:19:49 13-12-15</td><td>Sunday</td><td>Hello World</td>
<td>1234567</td><td></td><td>Today is a beautiful day</td>
<td>1234568</td><td></td><td>Tomorrow will be even better</td>
<td>1234569</td><td></td><td>December is the best month of the year!</td>
Liverpool - WBA 2-2
<td>1234570</td><td></td><td>This line should be ignored</td>
<td>19:29:59 13-12-15</td><td>Sunday</td><td>Hello World</td>
<td>1234571</td><td></td><td>Today is a beautiful day</td>
<td>1234572</td><td></td><td>Tomorrow will be even better</td>
Okay, per your update it is a bit more complicated but I think this does it:
$string = '09:19:49 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234567 Today is a beautiful day
1234568 Tomorrow will be even better
1234569 December is the best month of the year!
Liverpool - WBA 2-2
1234570 This line should be ignored
19:29:59 13-12-15 Sunday Hello World
1234571 Today is a beautiful day
1234572 Tomorrow will be even better';
echo preg_replace_callback('/(?:^|\n)(\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\h*\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}-\d{1,2})\h+([a-zA-Z]{3}day)?\h*(.+?)\n((\d{7})\h+(.+?)(\n|$))+/',
function ($matches) {
$lines = explode("\n", $matches[0]);
$theoutput = '<table><tr>';
foreach($lines as $line) {
if(preg_match('/(?:^|\n)(\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\h*\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}-\d{1,2})\h+([a-zA-Z]{3}day)?\h*(.*)/', $line, $output)) {
//it is the first date string line;
foreach($output as $key => $values) {
if(!empty($key)) {
$theoutput .= '<td>' . $values . '</td>';
}
}
} else {
if(preg_match('/(\d{7})\h*(.*)/', $line, $output)) {
$theoutput .= '</tr><tr>';
foreach($output as $key => $values) {
if(!empty($key)) {
$theoutput .= '<td>' . $values . '</td>';
}
}
}
}
}
$theoutput .= '</tr></table>';
return $theoutput;
}, $string);
Output:
<table><tr><td>09:19:49 13-12-15</td><td>Sunday</td><td>Hello World</td></tr><tr><td>1234567</td><td>Today is a beautiful day</td></tr><tr><td>1234568</td><td>Tomorrow will be even better</td></tr><tr><td>1234569</td><td>December is the best month of the year!</td></tr></table>
Liverpool - WBA 2-2
1234570 This line should be ignored
<table><tr><td>19:29:59 13-12-15</td><td>Sunday</td><td>Hello World</td></tr><tr><td>1234571</td><td>Today is a beautiful day</td></tr><tr><td>1234572</td><td>Tomorrow will be even better</td></tr></table>