How to match numbers in an array in PHP - php

Question

I am working on the routing or uri's in my PHP app. Currently I have an array with a regex => url map like this...
<?php
$uri_routes = array(
//users/account like http://mysite.com/users/324 (any digit)
'users/friends/page-(\d+)' => 'modules/users/friends/page-$1',
'users/friends/' => 'modules/users/friends/',
'users/online' => 'modules/users/online/' ,
'users/online/page-(\d+)' => 'modules/users/online/page-$1',
'users/create' => 'modules/users/create',
'users/settings' => 'modules/users/settings',
'users/logout(\d+)' => 'modules/users/logout',
'users/login' => 'modules/users/login',
'users/home' => 'modules/users/home',
//forums
'forums/' => 'modules/forums/index',
'forums/viewthread/(\d+)' => 'modules/forums/viewthread/$1',
'forums/viewforum/(\d+)' => 'modules/forums/viewforum/$1',
'forums/viewthread/(\d+)/page-(\d+)' => 'modules/forums/viewthread/$1/page-$2',
'forums/viewforum/(\d+)/page-(\d+)' => 'modules/forums/viewforum/$1/page-$2'
//blog routes coming soon
//mail message routes coming soon
//various other routes coming soon
);
?>
I can then cycle through my $uri_routes map array and match a uri with preg_match() like this...
<?php
//get url from URL
$uri = isset($_GET['uri']) ? $_GET['uri'] : null;
//runs our function and returns an array
// $uri['module'] this will be the class/module/section
// $uri['method'] this will be the page in that section or method in that class
// $uri['urifragments'] this will either page a user ID, or an item ID or a page number for paging
$uri = get_route($_GET['uri'],$uri_routes);
function get_route($uri,$uri_routes)
{
foreach($uri_routes as $rUri => $rRoute)
{
if(preg_match("#^{$rUri}$#Ui",$uri))
{
$uri = preg_replace("#^{$rUri}$#Ui",$rRoute,$uri);
break;
}
}
$uri = explode('/',$uri);
$return['module'] = $uri['1'];
$return['method'] = $uri['2'];
$return['urifragments'] = $uri['3'];
$return['urifragments2'] = $uri['4'];
return $return;
}
I am open to an suggestion to improve this in any way. Right now I am stuck as there is 4 possible array key/values returned. If array key 3 or key 4 contains the word "page-" followed by a number, I would like to assign it to a $page variable. But if key 3 or key 4 contains just a number with no "page-" word, then I can assume it is a user ID, blog ID, forum ID, etc and assign it to an $id variable.
If you know a good approach to this, please help.
UPDATE
to simplify things, in addition to having "page-" in front of page numbers, I could have "id-" in front of id numbers

Answer 1

Instead of using $1 and $2 to match our routes try using named captures.
5.2.2 Named subpatterns now accept the syntax (?) and (?'name') as
well as (?P). Previous versions
accepted only (?P).
Source : preg_match
Also when you are doing a preg_replace you use \[0-99] where \0 is the whole string and \1 through \99 are the matches.
But if you are going to be using named captures you can assign an array to the $replacement parameter with the name capture (e.g. if you capture ?P<page> then you would pass an array('page'=>"new value of page")).
Hope that helps.