PHP how to split text that have same delimiter in the text? - php

Question

I am having trouble to separate the text.
This is the scenario:
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal|Dog|Grape";
Suppose by using explode i could separate the word with "|", but because the value i retrieved "Animal|Dog" should be a word so in this case, what would be the solution?? I could not use
limit as well because the position or number of text could be different.
The only way to distinctly separate the text is the Animal keyword. Is there any function in php that similar to mysql LIKE syntax?
If Case 2
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog|Cat|Grape";
OR
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal:Fish|Bird|Grape";
where the name of animal could be vary.
Output
"Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog,Cat|Grape" or "Apple|Orange|Animal:Fish,Bird|Grape"
Thanks.

Answer 1

If all you want to do is replace "Animal|" with "Animal:" then you can do a simple str_replace:
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal|Dog|Grape";
$newCheck = str_replace("Animal|","Animal:"); // will be set to 'Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog|Grape'
Is that what you meant?
EDIT, FOR CASE 2:
I assume you have a string like "Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog|Cat|Grape", which has the category followed by 2 members of the category. From what you've said, you want to transform this string into "Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog,Cat|Grape" with a comma separating the two group members instead of a pipe. This is more complicated than the first case - the category name could vary, and you can't do a simple str_replace starting with the colon because the first member of the group could vary as well. For this case, you'll need to use a regular expression to match and replace the pattern of the string. Here's the code:
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog|Cat|Grape";
$newCheck = preg_replace("#(Animal:\w+)\|#", "$1,", $check); // will be set to "Apple|Orange|Animal:Dog,Cat|Grape"
DEMO
Let me explain what this does, in case you're not familiar with regular expressions. The first argument of the preg_replace function, "#(Animal:\w+)\|#", tells PHP to look for all substrings of $check that begin with the text "Animal" followed by a colon, then a string of words with one or more character, and end with a pipe. This will look for the category name as well as the first member of that category in your string. The second argument, ":$1,", tells PHP to change the first pipe after this pattern into a comma. If you have a different category name, simply change the pattern you pass as the first argument to the preg_replace function:
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal1:Fish|Bird|Grape";
$newCheck = preg_replace("#(Animal1:\w+)\|#", "$1,", $check); // will be set to "Apple|Orange|Animal1:Fish,Bird|Grape"
Let me know if this is hard to follow!

Answer 2

The way I would handle this would be to use a / instead of a | between categories and items. Or use a different delimiter if you really want to keep the | in between categories & items.
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal/Dog|Grape";
$ex=explode("|", $check);
but if you don't want to do that... then if you know what your category names are like "animal", you could explode the array on | and assume that if your current value is "animal", then the next element in the array is going to be "dog", "cat", whatever. This is not a good solution though, and would not work for multiple category levels.

Answer 3

You have spaces between Apple and orange, like this Apple | Orange. But there is no space between Animal and Dog Like this Animal|Dog. If this is the situation, you can explode it like this
$check = "Apple | Orange | Animal|Dog | Grape";
$ex=explode(" | ", $check);
Which will return array in format
array("Apple","Orange","Animal|Dog","Grape");
You can manipulate above array again to get Animal
I hope this is what you meant
Edit : A rough solution could be :
<?
$check = "Apple|Orange|Animal|Dog|Grape";
$ex=explode("|",$check);
if(in_array("Animal",$ex))
{
echo "Animal:";
}
if(in_array("Dog",$ex)){
echo "Dog";
}
?>
So in this case the position of Animal and Dog doesnot matter

Answer 4

str_replace("Animal|","Animal:",$check);
then do explode