PHP Getting values from an array/random word generator/split string into an array

Question

I have a sentence that needs to randomly change parts that are in the curly braces. The important part is that the values inside the braces can change (as in you could put any word in there), so

$x = '{Please,|Just|If you can,} make so, that this 

{incredible|cool|simple|important|useless} sentence {fast|correctly|instantly} 

changed randomly every time'; //this is the string that needs to be broken up

When I use

$parts = explode('{', $x);

it gives me an array that looks like this

array ([0]=>[1]=>{Please,|Just|If you can,} make so, that this [2]=>incredible|cool|simple|important|useless} sentence [3]=>fast|correctly|instantly} changed randomly every time)

which doesn't work.

What I've done is:

 $parts = [

  ['Please,','Just','If you can,'], 

  ['incredible', 'cool','simple','important','useless'],

  ['fast','correctly','instantly'],

];

$p = [];

foreach ($parts as $key => $values) {

  $index = array_rand($values, 1);

  $p[$key] = $values[$index];
}


  $x_one = $p[0] . ' make it so that ' .  $p[1] . ' this sentence

changed ' . $p[2] . ' randomly every time.';

echo $x_one;

I have to get $parts from $x, because the words in the string $x can change. Don't know where to go from here.

Syscall · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-25 12:11:55Z

4

You can use preg_replace_callback() to catch the sequence, split using | and return a random value:

$x = '{Please,|Just|If you can,} make so, that this

{incredible|cool|simple|important|useless} sentence {fast|correctly|instantly}

changed randomly every time';

// catch all strings that match with {...}
$str = preg_replace_callback('~\{([^}]+)\}~', function($matches){
    // split using |
    $pos = explode('|', $matches[1]);
    // return random element
    return $pos[array_rand($pos)];
}, $x);

echo $str;

Possible outputs:

If you can, make so, that this cool sentence correctly changed randomly every time
Please, make so, that this cool sentence fast changed randomly every time
If you can, make so, that this incredible sentence fast changed randomly every time

Regular expression:

\{       # { character
 (       # capture group
 [^}]+   # all character until }
 )       # end capture group
\}       # } character

edited Mar 25, 2018 at 12:11

answered Mar 25, 2018 at 11:08

Syscall

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1 Comment

Anna Kurmanova Over a year ago

Thank you! I've never used preg_replace_callback() before. And thank you for the explanation. I needed it

Yanis-git · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-25 11:13:05Z

Another approch can looks like this :

    $output = $input = '{Please,|Just|If you can,} make so, that this 

{incredible|cool|simple|important|useless} sentence {fast|correctly|instantly} 

changed randomly every time';


/**
 * Will output
 *  0 => string '{Please,|Just|If you can,}' (length=26)
 * 1 => string '{incredible|cool|simple|important|useless}' (length=42)
 * 2 => string '{fast|correctly|instantly}' (length=26)
 */
preg_match_all('/\{([^}]+)\}/',$input,$m);
foreach ($m[1] as $index => $rotateWord) {
    $words = explode('|',$rotateWord); //Split by pipe each words founds
    $randomWord = $words[rand(0, count($words) - 1)]; // Select random word.
    $output = str_replace($m[0][$index], $randomWord, $output);
}

var_dump($output);

Pedro Amaral Couto · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-25 22:56:51Z

Regex can be extremely useful in these cases. It's used, for instance, in parsers to find the tokens.

In this case you want to get all substrings between curly braces. This does the trick:

$matches = array();
preg_match_all('/\{([^}]*)\}/', $x, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => {Please,|Just|If you can,}
            [1] => {incredible|cool|simple|important|useless}
            [2] => {fast|correctly|instantly}
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => Please,|Just|If you can,
            [1] => incredible|cool|simple|important|useless
            [2] => fast|correctly|instantly
        )
)

The expression '/\{([^}]*)\}/ means:

/: this could be any character
\{: start with start curly brace
([^}]+): everything that is not an end curly brace (the parentheses are used to isolate the matched expression, that's why the result is in the index number 1 of an array)
\}: end with an end curly brace
/: it must be the same as the first character

In other words: anything between curly braces.

You can test regular expressions at https://regex101.com/ or at https://regexr.com/.

But that's not enough: you want to replace those matches. preg_replace can do that, but it's also not enough, because you also need to call some function to select a random substring. preg_replace_callback can do that.

<?php

$x = '{Please,|Just|If you can,} make so, that this 

{incredible|cool|simple|important|useless} sentence {fast|correctly|instantly} 

changed randomly every time';

echo preg_replace_callback(
    '/\{([^\}]+)\}/',
    function ($matches) {
        $options = explode('|', $matches[1]);
        return $options[array_rand($options)];
    },
    $x
);

Thank you for all of the helpful information, I really appreciate it.

sevavietl · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-25 14:17:46Z

0

If the values inside the braces can change, it is, in fact, better to extract them from the template into arrays, as you have done in the question. Having parts array and template string, you then can use array_map alongside with strtr:

$parts = [
  '%part1%' => ['Please,','Just','If you can,'], 

  '%part2%' => ['incredible', 'cool','simple','important','useless'],

  '%part3%' => ['fast','correctly','instantly'],
];

$template = '%part1% make so, that this %part2% sentence %part3% changed randomly every time';

$result = strtr($template, array_map(function ($values) {
    return $values[array_rand($values, 1)];
}, $parts));

Here is the demo.

answered Mar 25, 2018 at 14:17

sevavietl

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