What kind of notation is this? - php

Question

I've a string which looks like this:
[{
text: "key 1",
value: "value 1"
}, {
text: "key 2",
value: "value 2"
}, {
text: "key 3",
value: "value 3"
}]
I'm not sure what kind of notation this is, AFAIK this is generated by a ASP .NET backend. It looks a lot similar to JSON but calling json_decode() on this fails.
Can someone bring me some light on this kind of notation and provide me a efficient way to parse it into a key / value array with PHP?

Answer 1

Any way you can change the output? Quoting the key names seems to allow it to parse normally:
$test = '[{"text":"key 1","value":"value 1"},{"text":"key 2","value":"value 2"},{"text":"key 3","value":"value 3"}]';
var_dump(json_decode($test));

Answer 2

It is JSON-like, but apparently not exactly to the spec. The PHP json_decode function only likes double quoted key names:
// the following strings are valid JavaScript but not valid JSON
// the name and value must be enclosed in double quotes
// single quotes are not valid
$bad_json = "{ 'bar': 'baz' }";
json_decode($bad_json); // null
// the name must be enclosed in double quotes
$bad_json = '{ bar: "baz" }';
json_decode($bad_json); // null
// trailing commas are not allowed
$bad_json = '{ bar: "baz", }';
json_decode($bad_json); // null

Answer 3

That sample is valid YAML, which is a superset of JSON. There seem to be at least 3 PHP libraries for YAML.
If it is in fact YAML, you're better off using a real YAML library, than running it through a regex and throwing it at your JSON library. YAML has support for other features (besides unquoted strings) which, if your ASP.NET backend uses, aren't going to survive the trip.

Answer 4

It looks like javascript syntax (similar to JSON). Regular expressions are the way to go for parsing it. Strip the '[' and ']', then separate on the ','. Then parse each object individually.

Answer 5

It looks like a custom format. Replace the [{ and }] delimiters at the beginning and the end. Then explode on "},{" and you get this:
text:"key 1",value:"value 1"
text:"key 2",value:"value 2"
text:"key 3",value:"value 3"
At that point you can iterate over each element in the array and use preg_match to extract your values.

Answer 6

It looks almost like a sort of array-style data container - text being the index and value being the value.
$string = ....;
$endArray = array()
$string = trim($string,'[]');
$startArray = preg_split('/{.+}/');
// Array of {text:"key 1",value:"value 1"}, this will also skip empty conainers
foreach( $startArray as $arrayItem ) {
$tmpString = trim($arrayItem,'{}'); // $tmp = text:"key 1",value:"value 1"
$tmpArray = explode(',',$tmpString); // $tmpArray = ('text: "key 1"', 'value: "value 1"')
$endArray[substr($tmpArray[0],7,strlen($tmpArray[0])-1)] = substr($tmpArray[1],7,strlen($tmpArray[1])-1);
}

Answer 7

To get your JSON data accepted by json_decode(), you could use the following regular expression:
function json_replacer($match) {
if ($match[0] == '"' || $match[0] == "'") {
return $match;
}
else {
return '"'.$match.'"';
}
}
$json_re = <<<'END'
/ " (?: \\. | [^\\"] )* " # double-quoted string, with escapes
| ' (?: \\. | [^\\'] )* ' # single-quoted string, with escapes
| \b [A-Za-z_] \w* (?=\s*:) # A single word followed by a colon
/x
END;
$json = preg_replace_callback($json_re, 'json_replacer', $json);
Because the matches will never overlap, a word followed by colon inside a string will never match.
I also found a comparison between different JSON implementations for PHP:
http://gggeek.altervista.org/sw/article_20061113.html

Answer 8

I have never used it, but maybe give a look at json_decode.