How to parse returned php data - php

Question

I am accessing an external PHP server feed (not a real link):
$raw = file_get_contents('http://www.domain.com/getResults.php');
that returns data in the following context:
<pre>Array
(
[RequestResult] => Array
(
[Response] => Success
[Value] => 100
[Name] => Abracadabra
)
)
</pre>
But I can't figure out how to handle this response... I would like to be able to grab the [Value] value and the [Name] value but my PHP skills are pretty weak... Additionally if there is a way to handle this with JavaScript (I'm a little better with JavaScript) then I could consider building my routine as a client side function...
Can anyone suggest a way to handle this feed response?

Answer 1

How about something like this
function responseToArray($raw)
{
$result = array();
foreach(explode("\n", $raw) as $line)
{
$line = trim($line);
if(stripos($line, " => ") === false)
{
continue;
}
$toks = explode(' => ', $line);
$k = str_replace(array('[',']'), "", $toks[0]);
$result[$k] = $toks[1];
}
return $result;
}

Answer 2

does $raw[RequestResult][Value] not work? I think the data is just a nested hash table

Answer 3

The script on the other side can return a JSON string of the array, and your client script can easily read it. See json_encode() and json_decode(). http://www.php.net/json-encode and http://www.php.net/json-decode
What you are doing on the "server" script is actually to var_dump the variable. var_dump is actually used more for debugging to see what a variable actually contains, not for data transfer.
On server script:
<?php
header("Content-Type: application/json");
$arr_to_output = array();
// .. fill up array
echo json_encode($arr_to_output);
?>
The output of the script would be something like ['element1', 'element2'].
On client script:
<?php
$raw = file_get_contents('http://example.com/getData.php');
$arr = json_decode($raw, true); // true to make sure it returns array. else it will return object.
?>
Alternative
If the structure of the data is fixed this way, then you can try to do it dirty using regular expressions.
On client script:
<?php
$raw = file_get_contents('http://example.com/getData.php');
$arr = array('RequestResult'=>array());
preg_match('`\[Response\]\s\=\>\s([^\r\n]+)`is',$raw,$m);
$arr['RequestResult']['Response'] = $m[1];
preg_match('`\[Value\]\s\=\>\s([^\r\n]+)`is',$raw,$m);
$arr['RequestResult']['Value'] = $m[1];
preg_match('`\[Name\]\s\=\>\s([^\r\n]+)`is',$raw,$m);
$arr['RequestResult']['Name'] = $m[1];
// $arr is populated as the same structure as the one in the output.
?>

Answer 4

Two possible solutions:
Solution #1 Change one line at the source:
It looks like getResults.php is doing a print_r. If that print_r could be changed to var_export you would get a PHP-parseable string to feed to eval:
$raw = file_get_contents('http://www.domain.com/getResults.php');
$a= eval($raw);
echo($raw['RequestResult']['Value']);
Be warned, eval'ing raw data from an external source (then echo()'ing it out) is not very secure
Solution #2 Parse with a regex:
<?php
$s= <<<EOS
<pre>Array
(
[RequestResult] => Array
(
[Response] => Success
[Value] => 100
[Name] => Abracadabra
)
)
</pre>
EOS;
if (preg_match_all('/\[(\w+)\]\s+=>\s+(.+)/', $s, $m)) {
print_r(array_combine($m[1], $m[2]));
}
?>
And now $a would contain: $a['Value']==100 and $a['Name']=='Abracadabra' etc.