PHP Use regex to find and remove a variable in a string - php

Question

With PHP, I'm opening a file and it looks like this:
var people = {
vikram: { time1: [ '8:00am', '8:20am', '8:40am', '9:00am', ], time2: [ '10:20am', '10:40am', '11:00am', '11:20am', ], time3: [ '8:00am', '8:20am', '8:40am', ], }};
The variable I'm trying to remove will contain a time (ex. 8:00am) and I will know the timeIndex(ex. time1). I also want to keep all the other times intact.
For example, if I set the variable to 8:40am, I want the new file that is being created to look like this:
var people = {
vikram: { time1: [ '8:00am', '8:20am', '9:00am', ], time2: [ '10:20am', '10:40am', '11:00am', '11:20am', ], time3: [ '8:00am', '8:20am', '8:40am', ], }};
Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

The format you show represents a JSON formatted string. You can use json_decode() function to make an array from string, then loop through the array and just unset() the element you don't need.

Answer 2

you can use preg_replace() for this:
<?php
$filename = 'yourfile.js';
$search = '8:40am';
$content = file_get_contents( $filename );
$pattern = '/(\s*time1:\s*\[.*)([\'"]' .
preg_quote($search) .
'[\'"],?\s*)(.*\])/U';
$content = preg_replace( $pattern, '\1\3', $content );
file_put_contents( $filename, $content );
?>
This is a modification of the code example i answered to your last question on a similar topic.

Answer 3

Here is the way I did it. Basically, I use json_decode to parse your json to php object. However, I also found that your input is not a well-formed json for php (See example 3). Although my code doesn't look good and generic, but I hope it will help you.
<?php
$json_data = '{
"vikram": {
"time1": ["8:00am", "8:20am", "8:40am", "9:00am"],
"time2": ["10:20am", "10:40am", "11:00am", "11:20am"],
"time3": ["8:00am", "8:20am", "8:40am"]
}
}';
$obj = json_decode($json_data);
//var_dump($obj->vikram);
$value = "8:40am";
$time1 = "time1";
$delete_item;
foreach($obj->vikram as $name=>$node)
{
foreach($node as $i => $time)
{
if($time==$value && $name=$time1)
{
$delete_item = $i;
}
}
}
unset($obj->vikram->time1[$delete_item]);
var_dump($obj->vikram);