PHP splitting a string - php

Question

So I have the following string:
{family:Open Sans,name:Open Sans,import_family:Open+Sans:300,300italic,regular,italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic,classname:opensans}
I'd like to "vectorize" it, so maybe it would look something like this:
XX['family'] = "Open Sans',
XX['name'] = 'Open Sans',
XX['import_family'] = 'Open+Sans:300,300italic,regular,italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic',
XX['classname'] = 'opensans';
Any ideas on how I could achieve this in PHP? It's getting on my nerves, been trying to work it out with regular expressions for the last couple of hours with no results so far.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Here is a simple parser for this format you could use. It will handle all fields and values and return them as a key/value array. It assumes that the string starts and ends with curly braces and uses the field:optional:optional,a,b,c format.
<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain');
function parse($str) {
$obj = [];
$str = substr($str, 1, -1);
$candidates = explode(',', $str);
$lastKey = null;
foreach ($candidates as $candidate) {
if (strpos($candidate, ':')) {
$parts = explode(':', $candidate);
$key = $parts[0];
$value = substr($candidate, strlen($key) + 1);
$obj[$key] = $value;
$lastKey = $key;
} else {
$obj[$lastKey] .= ',' . $candidate;
}
}
return $obj;
}
$example = '{family:Open Sans,name:Open Sans,import_family:Open+Sans:300,300italic,regular,italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic,classname:opensans}';
print_r(parse($example));
?>
Output from the example string you specified:
Array
(
[family] => Open Sans
[name] => Open Sans
[import_family] => Open+Sans:300,300italic,regular,italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic
[classname] => opensans
)

Answer 2

Try this:
$s = "{family:Open Sans,name:Open Sans,import_family:Open+Sans:300,300italic,regular,italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic,classname:opensans}";
$s = rtrim(ltrim($s, '{'), '}');
preg_match_all('#([^:,]+):((?:(?!(,[^:,]+:)).)*)#', $s, $matches);
$vector = array_combine($matches[1], $matches[2]);
EDIT
As HamZa explains here, a shorter regular expression is:
([^:,]+):(.+?)(?=,[^,]+:|$)