Fastest way to create array from string - php

Hy,
I'm creating a script to load a binary file into an array then parse the array myself (creating another array with decoded binary data : IA5String, Int, String, (basicaly ASN.1) etc and then create a .csv)
The problem that slows my script down is loading the hex values into an array and i'm using this method :
$hex = explode(" ",rtrim(chunk_split(bin2hex(file_get_contents($filename)),2,' ')));
The thing is that explode() function is taking a lot of time and resources and I was wondering if there is another faster or maybe simpler solution to save some running time.
Thanks

str_split is another function to convert string to array.

Related

Memory efficient to/from file serialization in PHP

I'm looking for a way to serialize large arrays to a file in PHP.
Right now I use a simple JSON format. Unfortunately to store JSON to a file you need to convert it to a string first with json_encode and then write the string to a file. During this process the amount of used memory almost doubles (it's less). And in some cases it can be a problem if things are happening concurrently.
My question is: is there a PHP library (binary preferably) which can serialize an array to a file (a JSON format would be nice) without converting the object to a string and thus 'doubling' the memory. If the output can be compressed with GZIP, what would be even better.
Any other suggestion to write (and read) of large object without intermediate format/state are welcome too.
If memory is the only concern
At the risk of being called Captain Obvious - I'd like to suggest a weird approach I like to use when there's not enough memory and I have to deal with something that only fits in once. Also, if garbage collection doesn't happen, that can be solved by doing the job in several steps as this article explains.
What I mean is something like this:
function packWithoutExhaustingMemory (array $a) {
foreach($a as $key => $value) {
$a[$key] = gzcompress(serialize($value)); // but only one piece at a
time!
}
return $a;
}
Again, not sure if this exact piece will do the job but it illustrates the concept.

Is there a PHP function to encode/decode a multidimensional array in a string?

Is there a PHP function to encode a generic multidimensional array as a string and get it back as a multidimensional array?
I need it to store in mysql some data (a drupal computed field to be precise). The array contains just floats and strings.
serialize() and unserialize() do what you describe.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.serialize.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.unserialize.php
You could also consider encoding the array as JSON with json_encode() and json_decode(), which gives more readable output, if that is important to you.
I second the use of "json_encode" and "json_decode". I believe the output of "json_encode" is less verbose than PHP's serialize function (since data types are inferred) and is immediately more portable (even though that is not a requirement).
Make sure you pass "TRUE" for the second parameter of "json_decode", otherwise you may get a simple object back, depending on how the original data was encoded.

Parsing serialized Array (Wordpress)

I'm using wordpress and one of my meta key values is stored like this:
a:1:{i:0;s:8:"Religion";}
I'm trying to figure out the easiest way in PHP to parse this so I can extract "Religion" or really any of the elements in a clean manner.
Hope this makes sense - thanks!!!
Loren
that is a serialized array, use unserialize()
$array = unserialize('a:1:{i:0;s:8:"Religion";}');
echo $array[0];
This works in PHP 5.2 and above:
list($thatWord) = unserialize($metaKeyValue);
You then have the string "Religion" in $thatWord.
The string you have:
a:1:{i:0;s:8:"Religion";}
Is a serialized array. If you retrieve it from within wordpress, you would get an Array instead of a string. I assume you pull it from the database directly, so you need to unserializeDocs it your own.

Getting one value out of a serialized array in PHP

What would you say is the most efficient way to get a single value out of an Array. I know what it is, I know where it is. Currently I'm doing it with:
$array = unserialize($storedArray);
$var = $array['keyOne'];
Wondering if there is a better way.
You are doing it fine, I can't think of a better way than what you are doing.
You unserialize
You get an array
You get value by specifying index
That's the way it can be done.
Wondering if there is a better way.
For the example you give with the array, I think you're fine.
If the serialized string contains data and objects you don't want to unserialize (e.g. creating objects you really don't want to have), you can use the Serialized PHP library which is a complete parser for serialized data.
It offers low-level access to serialized data statically, so you can only extract a subset of data and/or manipulate the serialized data w/o unserializing it. However that looks too much for your example as you only have an array and you don't need to filter/differ too much I guess.
Its most efficient way you can do, unserialize and get data, if you need optimize dont store all variables serialized.
Also there is always way to parse it with regexp :)
If you dont want to unseralize the whole thing (which can be costly, especially for more complex objects), you can just do a strpos and look for the features you want and extract them
Sure.
If you need a better way - DO NOT USE serialized arrays.
Serialization is just a transport format, of VERY limited use.
If you need some optimized variant - there are hundreds of them.
For example, you can pass some single scalar variable instead of whole array. And access it immediately
I, too, think the right way is to un-serialize.
But another way could be to use string operations, when you know what you want from the array:
$storedArray = 'a:2:{s:4:"test";s:2:"ja";s:6:"keyOne";i:5;}';
# another: a:2:{s:4:"test";s:2:"ja";s:6:"keyOne";s:3:"sdf";}
$split = explode('keyOne', $storedArray, 2);
# $split[1] contains the value and junk before and after the value
$splitagain = explode(';', $split[1], 3);
# $splitagain[1] should be the value with type information
$value = array_pop(explode(':', $splitagain[1], 3));
# $value contains the value
Now, someone up for a benchmark? ;)
Another way might be RegEx ?

How can I convert all values of an array to floats in PHP?

I am fetching an array of floats from my database but the array I get has converted the values to strings.
How can I convert them into floats again without looping through the array?
Alternatively, how can I fetch the values from the database without converting them to strings?
EDIT:
I am using the Zend Framework and I am using PDO_mysql. The values are stored one per column and that is a requirement so I can't serialize them.
array_map('floatval', $array) only works on single dimensional arrays.
I can't floatval the single elements when I use them because I have to pass an array to my flash chart.
The momentary, non-generic solution is to extract the rows and do array_map('floatval',$array) with each row.
You could use
$floats = array_map('floatval', $nonFloats);
There is the option PDO::ATTR_STRINGIFY_FETCHES but from what I remember, MySQL always has it as true
Edit: see Bug 44341 which confirms MySQL doesn't support turning off stringify.
Edit: you can also map a custom function like this:
function toFloats($array)
{
return array_map('floatval', $array);
}
$data = array_map('toFloats', $my2DArray);
How are you getting your data? mysql, mysqli or PDO, some other way or even some other database?
you could use array_map with floatval like so:
$data = array_map('floatval', $data);
but that still executes a loop and i think it assumes you only have one column in your data.
you're probably best of casting to float when you use your value, if you have to. php is likely to do a good job of interpreting it right anyway.
LOL... are you working on the same project I am tharkun?
I just finished (last night) creating something, in a ZF based project, that uses pdo_mysql to retrieve and format data and then output it as xml for use in a flash piece. The values were going in as strings but needed to be floats.
Since I'm also the one who wrote the part that gets the data and the one who created the database I just made sure the data was converted to float before it went into the database.
I simply cast the values as float as part of some other formatting, for what it is worth.
protected function _c2f($input)
{
$input = (float)$input;
$output = round(($input * 1.8) + 32, 2);
return $output;
}
I found an easy way for this operation.
You can do this just by adding foreach loop to your code. foreach loop is used to fetch your array string data one by one. and then, you can simply convert this by function number_format. i used 2 place after convert to float value. i.e it used to print value after dot value 2 place.
$example= array("12.20", "15.05", "55.70");
foreach($example as $float)
{
$update_value = number_format($float,2);
echo $update_value."<br>";
}
Not sure what you're asking here? You can cast a string to a float, using (float) $string, but since PHP is dynamically typed, that will happen anyway, when needed. There is no reason to do an explicit cast.
What are you using floating point values for?

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