Recursive querystring parser - php

Question

I'm in need of a function that will parse a querystring into a multidimensional array.
The querystring could look somewhat like this:
?fields=incidents:(id,shortdescription,action,request);people:(unid,name)&format=json
The array returned should like like this:
array(
'fields' => array(
'incidents' => array(
'id',
'shortdescription',
'action',
'request'
),
'people' => array(
'unid',
'name'
),
),
'format' => 'json'
);
I want the separators to be dynamic, so they would reside in an array like this:
$separators = array(';', ':', ',');
The order of the seperators in this array will determine the order in which the querystring is parsed.
Someone have anything like this handy???
Regards,
Mark

Answer 1

To get you started:
$final = array();
$keys = explode("&", $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']);
foreach ($keys as $key => $value) {
$final[$key] = $value;
$child = explode(";", $value);
foreach ($child as $key2 => $value2) {
$final[$key][$key2] = array();
$subchild = explode(":", $value2);
foreach ($subchild as $key3 => $value3) {
$subsubchild = explode(",", $value3);
$final[$key][$key2][$key3] = $subsubchild;
}
}
}
I didn't test this, but hopefully get the idea of where I'm going...
This could be updated to create a function that accepts a delimiter to make it truly recursive so that rather than having a loop inside a loop inside a loop you could call this function...

Answer 2

Myself, I came up with this:
protected static function split( $value, $sep = ',' )
{
if ( str_contains( $value, $sep ) )
$value = explode( $sep, $value );
return $value;
}
protected static function multi_split( $value )
{
$arr = array();
// Do we have multiple models?
$parts = static::split( $value, '+' );
if ( count( $parts ) > 1 ) {
foreach( $parts as $part ) {
$models = static::split( $part, ':' );
if ( count( $models ) > 1 ) {
$fields = static::split( trim($models[1], '()'), ',' );
$arr[$models[0]] = $fields;
}
}
return $arr;
}
// Do we have a single model?
$parts = static::split( $value, ':' );
if ( count( $parts ) > 1 ) {
$fields = static::split( trim($parts[1], '()'), ',' );
$arr[$parts[0]] = $fields;
return $arr;
}
// Do we have a comma-separated param?
$parts = static::split( $value, ',' );
if ( count( $parts ) > 1 )
return $parts;
// Do we have a string param?
return $value;
}
There is a lot of repetition that I would like to get rid off. Also, it is not very dynamic yet!