Extracting meaningful data from this complicated string in PHP - php

Question

I'm receiving some structured data for my PHP application, but the format is somewhat unpredictable and difficult to deal with. I don't get a say in the initial format of the data. What I get is a string (sample given below).
[9484,'Víctor Valdés',8,[[['accurate_pass',[15]],['touches',[42]],['saves',[4]],['total_pass',[24]],['good_high_claim',[2]],['formation_place',[1]]]],1,'GK',1,0,0,'GK',31,183,78],[1320,'Carles Puyol',7.76,[[['accurate_pass',[50]],['touches',[75]],['aerial_won',[3]],['total_pass',[55]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[6]]]],2,'DC',5,0,0,'D(CLR)',35,178,80],[5780,'Dani Alves',8.21,[[['accurate_pass',[58]],['touches',[99]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[6]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[4]],['formation_place',[2]]]],2,'DR',22,0,0,'D(CR)',30,173,64],[83686,'Marc Bartra',8.31,[[['accurate_pass',[64]],['touches',[88]],['won_contest',[1]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['aerial_won',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[5]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[1]],['formation_place',[5]]]],2,'DC',15,0,0,'D(C)',22,181,70],[13471,'Adriano',6.72,[[['accurate_pass',[16]],['touches',[28]],['aerial_won',[2]],['total_pass',[18]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[3]]]],2,'DL',21,1,31,'D(CLR),M(LR)',29,172,67]
The above is data for 5 football players. This is what I need to get:
[9484,'Víctor Valdés',8,[[['accurate_pass',[15]],['touches',[42]],['saves',[4]],['total_pass',[24]],['good_high_claim',[2]],['formation_place',[1]]]],1,'GK',1,0,0,'GK',31,183,78]
[1320,'Carles Puyol',7.76,[[['accurate_pass',[50]],['touches',[75]],['aerial_won',[3]],['total_pass',[55]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[6]]]],2,'DC',5,0,0,'D(CLR)',35,178,80]
[5780,'Dani Alves',8.21,[[['accurate_pass',[58]],['touches',[99]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[6]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[4]],['formation_place',[2]]]],2,'DR',22,0,0,'D(CR)',30,173,64]
[83686,'Marc Bartra',8.31,[[['accurate_pass',[64]],['touches',[88]],['won_contest',[1]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['aerial_won',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[5]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[1]],['formation_place',[5]]]],2,'DC',15,0,0,'D(C)',22,181,70]
[13471,'Adriano',6.72,[[['accurate_pass',[16]],['touches',[28]],['aerial_won',[2]],['total_pass',[18]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[3]]]],2,'DL',21,1,31,'D(CLR),M(LR)',29,172,67]
Now, what I've done manually in the above example I need to do reliably with PHP. As you see, each player has a set of data. In order to split the big string into individual players, I can't just explode it by "],[" because that substring appears within each player's data too an unpredictable number of times.
Each player has a certain number of statistics (accurate_pass, touches etc) but they don't all have the same statistics. For instance, player #1 has "saves" and the others don't. Player #4 has "won_contest" and the others don't. There is no way to know who will have which stats. That means I can't just count commas until the new player or something similar.
Each player has a number before his name, but that number has an unpredictable number of digits and there's no way to discern it from other numbers which may appear in the string.
What I see as a constant occurrence for all players is the last bit: before the last closed bracket there are always 3 integers divided by commas. This type of substring (INT,INT,INT]) doesn't seem to appear in any other situation. Maybe this could be of some use?

Answer 1

A "hard" way to do this is parenthesis counting (less common in PHP, more common in text parsing languages)...
<?php
$str = "[9484,'Víctor Valdés',8,[[['accurate_pass',[15]],['touches',[42]],['saves',[4]],['total_pass',[24]],['good_high_claim',[2]],['formation_place',[1]]]],1,'GK',1,0,0,'GK',31,183,78],[1320,'Carles Puyol',7.76,[[['accurate_pass',[50]],['touches',[75]],['aerial_won',[3]],['total_pass',[55]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[6]]]],2,'DC',5,0,0,'D(CLR)',35,178,80],[5780,'Dani Alves',8.21,[[['accurate_pass',[58]],['touches',[99]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[6]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[4]],['formation_place',[2]]]],2,'DR',22,0,0,'D(CR)',30,173,64],[83686,'Marc Bartra',8.31,[[['accurate_pass',[64]],['touches',[88]],['won_contest',[1]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['aerial_won',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[5]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[1]],['formation_place',[5]]]],2,'DC',15,0,0,'D(C)',22,181,70],[13471,'Adriano',6.72,[[['accurate_pass',[16]],['touches',[28]],['aerial_won',[2]],['total_pass',[18]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[3]]]],2,'DL',21,1,31,'D(CLR),M(LR)',29,172,67]";
$line = ',';
$paren_count = 0;
$lines = array();
for($i=0; $i<strlen($str); $i++)
{
$line.= $str{$i};
if($str{$i} == '[') $paren_count++;
elseif($str{$i} == ']')
{
$paren_count--;
if($paren_count == 0)
{
$lines[] = substr($line,1);
$line = '';
}
}
}
print_r($lines);
?>

Answer 2

Looks like #Boundless answer is correct, you can use json_decode, but you need to do a couple of things to the string you get first, which also seems like a valid json formatted string.
This worked for me:
<?php
$str = "[9484,'Víctor Valdés',8,[[['accurate_pass',[15]],['touches',[42]],['saves',[4]],['total_pass',[24]],['good_high_claim',[2]],['formation_place',[1]]]],1,'GK',1,0,0,'GK',31,183,78],[1320,'Carles Puyol',7.76,[[['accurate_pass',[50]],['touches',[75]],['aerial_won',[3]],['total_pass',[55]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[6]]]],2,'DC',5,0,0,'D(CLR)',35,178,80],[5780,'Dani Alves',8.21,[[['accurate_pass',[58]],['touches',[99]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[6]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[4]],['formation_place',[2]]]],2,'DR',22,0,0,'D(CR)',30,173,64],[83686,'Marc Bartra',8.31,[[['accurate_pass',[64]],['touches',[88]],['won_contest',[1]],['total_scoring_att',[1]],['aerial_won',[1]],['total_pass',[66]],['total_tackle',[5]],['aerial_lost',[1]],['fouls',[1]],['formation_place',[5]]]],2,'DC',15,0,0,'D(C)',22,181,70],[13471,'Adriano',6.72,[[['accurate_pass',[16]],['touches',[28]],['aerial_won',[2]],['total_pass',[18]],['total_tackle',[1]],['formation_place',[3]]]],2,'DL',21,1,31,'D(CLR),M(LR)',29,172,67]";
$str = '[' . $str . ']';
$str = str_replace('\'','"', $str);
//convert string to array
$arr = json_decode($str);
//now it's a php array so you can access any value
//echo '<pre>';
//print_r( $arr );
//echo '</pre>';
echo $arr [0][1]; //prints "Victor Valdes"
?>

Answer 3

Your string looks like JSON but it is not valid JSON so json_decode() will not work.
Your specific case could be converted to valid JSON by wrapping the string in a pair of [] and replacing the single quotes with double quotes:
$string = str_replace("'", '"', $your_string);
var_dump(json_decode('[' . $string . ']'));
See this example.
Of course the best solution would be to make sure that valid JSON is supplied because this will break easily if your text strings contain for example double quotes.

Answer 4

Try parsing as json, then pulling out what you want. Assuming that the data comes in blocks of 4 you can try:
$arr = json_decode($str);
for($i = 0; $i < count($arr) - 3; $i += 4)
{
$arr[] = new array($arr[$i], $arr[$i + 1], $arr[$i + 2], $arr[$i + 3]);
}

Answer 5

Why not count the [ in a loop? Here's a quick untested loop that could get you started.
$output = array('');
$brackets = 0;
$index = 0;
foreach (str_split($input) as $ch) {
if ($ch == '[') {
$brackets++;
}
$output[$index] .= $ch;
if ($ch == ']') {
$brackets--;
if ($brackets === 0) {
$index++;
$output[$index] = '';
}
}
}
Not very elegant though...