PHP parsing .txt file into an array witha specific start and end

Question

Okay, i've read a lot of information on parsing a .TXT file. but I cant seem to work this one out.Ultimately i need to parse the data from a .txt file into an array starting after a specific line that says '!data;' and stopping at '!enddata;' below is the example of my source file. I want to pick out all of the data separated by the colon and place it into an array. if you can give me some asssistance; or point me in the right direction, that would be awesome :)

Usless text
!data;
data1:data2:data3:data4:data5:data6:data7:
data1:data2:data3:data4:data5:data6:data7:

!enddata;
More Useless text

i know on each line i need to use the explode function, i just dont know how to get it to start stop at that specific line!

Community · Accepted Answer · 2023-11-17 20:38:18Z

1

Regular expressions aren't necessary. Use file to split a file into an array of lines, and create a boolean value (here, $capture) to "remember" whether future lines should be captured or not.

$lines = file('example.txt', FILE_IGNORE_NEW_LINES);
$start_identifier = '!data;';
$end_identifier = '!enddata;';
$capture = false;
$elements = array();

foreach($lines as $line){
    // Capture subsequent lines, skip this line which doesn't contain data
    if($line == $start_identifier){
        $capture = true;
        continue;
    }
    // Skip subsequent lines, skip this line which doesn't contain data
    elseif($line == $end_identifier){
        $capture = false;
        continue;
    }

    // If we should capture this line, implement splitting logic to do so
    if($capture and !empty($line)){
        // Split elements of this line
        $line_elements = explode(':', $line);
        // Remove empty elements
        $line_elements = array_filter($line_elements, function($e){ return !empty($e); });
        // Add this line's elements to array of all elements
        $elements = array_merge($elements, $line_elements);
    }
}

$elements; // array('data1', 'data2', ...

edited Nov 17, 2023 at 20:38

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answered Feb 9, 2014 at 5:01

Jacob Budin

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1 Comment

tworkman08 Over a year ago

This answer helped me the most and modeled (in a cleaner way) the path that i was going down. Thanks!

Shankar Narayana Damodaran · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-09 05:36:38Z

1

You could do like this using array_slice and file in PHP

<?php
echo "<pre>";
$arr=file('status.txt'); //<---- Grabbing all the content to an array 
$arr = array_map('trim',$arr);
$keyStart = array_search(trim('!data;'),$arr);   //<----- Beginning Key
$keyEnd=array_search('!enddata;',$arr);          //<----- Ending key
$output = array_slice($arr, $keyStart, $keyEnd); // Use slice to extract portion !
print_r($output);                                // Print your results !

OUTPUT :

Array
(
    [0] => !data;
    [1] => data1:data2:data3:data4:data5:data6:data7:
    [2] => data1:data2:data3:data4:data5:data6:data7:
    [3] => 
    [4] => !enddata;
)

edited Feb 9, 2014 at 5:36

answered Feb 9, 2014 at 5:01

Shankar Narayana Damodaran

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1 Comment

deviloper Over a year ago

Great Answer Shankar!

cbreezier · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-09 04:49:24Z

0

I'm going to answer this with regex.

Our plan of attack:

strip everything before '!data;' and everything after '!enddata;'
remove all newline characters

explode on ':'

$file = file_get_contents('data.txt');
$file = preg_replace('/.*!data;/ms', '', $file);
$file = preg_replace('/!enddata;.*$/ms', '', $file);

$file = preg_replace('/\r\n/', '', $file);

$result = explode(':', $file);

Explanations: The m modifier lets it match on multiline strings.

The s modifier (dotall) lets . match newline characters

\r\n handles windows type newlines. You can change that to just \n on linux (or do both types to handle both types)

Finally, explode splits on ':' character.

answered Feb 9, 2014 at 4:49

cbreezier

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deviloper · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-09 06:20:41Z

0

$arr = array();
$temp ="";
$i=0;
$handle = @fopen("text.txt", "r");
if ($handle) {
        while (($buffer = fgets($handle, 4096)) !== false) {
            $temp = $temp . $buffer;
            if(strpos($temp,"!enddata;") === false){
            if (strpos($temp,'!data;') !== false) {
               $arr[$i] =  $buffer;
            }
            $i++;
        }   
    }
    fclose($handle);
    echo "<pre>";print_r($arr);
}

edited Feb 9, 2014 at 6:20

answered Feb 9, 2014 at 5:38

deviloper

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1 Comment

Jacob Budin Over a year ago

while(strpos($temp,'!enddata') !== true) is an infinite loop. strpos never returns true.

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