PHP Regex Multiple Instances

Question

I'm currently importing CSV data and need to get it all nice and arrayed out.

Smaller Example Data is as follows.

"Name","Address"
"John Doe","5111 Fury Rd
Santa Cruz"
"Jane Doe","321 Tess St Texas"
"Josh Doe","653 1st St 
Orlando Florida
United States"

As you can see we need to split on line breaks outside of quotes as str_getcsv isn't multi-line.

I had originally used this expression.

$lines = preg_split('/[\r\n]{1,2}(?=(?:[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*(?![^\"]*\"))/',$data);

However preg_split crapped the bed when it was over XXXX amount of characters in the string.

So resorting to preg_match_all currently but need issues with the regex selector.

preg_match_all('/^(.*?)[\r\n]{1,2}(?=(?:[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*(?![^\"]*\"))/', $data, $matches);

Currently that matches only the first instance.

Array(
    [0] => Array ( [0] => "Name","Address")
    [1] => Array ( [0] => "Name","Address")
)

Any clue to get it to return all the data in an array?

Its CSV data Im importing so it should be 1 giant string separated by line breaks for each entry(row). — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 14:40
`^` without an `m` modifier only matches the first line (start of the string). — chris85, Aug 15 '17 at 14:41
Perhaps `/^"([^"]+?)","([^"]+?)"$/m` would work for you? This also assumes your string would never have escaped quotes in it and that you only have 2 matches — chris85, Aug 15 '17 at 14:46
Checking the quotes until the end with a lookahead isn't the way to go (complicated and inefficient). you need to build a pattern with the `\G` anchor instead. — Casimir et Hippolyte, Aug 15 '17 at 14:47
I may be misunderstanding, but I would have done it like this `"((\s|\S)*?)","((\s|\S)*?)"` where `$1` is `name` and `$3` is `address` — GrumpyCrouton, Aug 15 '17 at 14:48
@chris85 your comment was correct. Removing the ^ did return all the results. — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 14:49
Unfortunately, it does seem that it is running into the same issue as preg_split in that when I try to move through >150 results it craps the bed. — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 14:50
@GrumpyCrouton That arrays everything. ie 50 rows of data returns as 5000. (Theres 100+ data points per row) — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 14:55
@chris85 AH00051: child pid 18587 exit signal Segmentation fault (11), possible coredump in /etc/apache2 — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:01
Maybe I missed something but is this what you are looking for? https://3v4l.org/3Ds55 — Andreas, Aug 15 '17 at 15:02
Are you importing this CSV data from a file? If so, why not just use [`fgetcsv`](http://php.net/manual/en/function.fgetcsv.php)? — Darragh Enright, Aug 15 '17 at 15:10
@chris85 Error reporting is on but the page craps the bed so Thats what im pulling from the error.log files. — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:10
@Andreas Basically my issue but it doesn't work for me. splits the data all weird. — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:11
@DarraghEnright I am not. Grabbing data that would be exported to a csv file but not importing from a file. — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:12
@Andreas So the issue is I have 100+ fields per row. My example was just a shortened version. So what that expression does is return two at a time. ie. [0]=>"First Name","Last Name" [1]=>"City","State"... etc — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:16
@user1512593 I saw your comment - deleting my answer as it wasn't relevant, given the underlying errors you are experiencing — Darragh Enright, Aug 15 '17 at 15:32

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 15 '17 at 15:16

Here is one way to parse it. I have commented out the part that deletes new lines in the address. If you want it just remove the commenting.

$re = '/\"(.*?)\",\"(.*?)\"/s';
$data = '"Name","Address"
"John Doe","5111 Fury Rd
Santa Cruz"
"Jane Doe","321 Tess St Texas"
"Josh Doe","653 1st St
Orlando Florida
United States"';

preg_match_all($re, $data, $matches);

/*
foreach($matches[2] as &$value){
    $value = str_replace(PHP_EOL, " ", $value);
}
*/
var_dump($matches);

https://3v4l.org/7kRDt

Output with the foreach:

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  array(4) {
    [0]=>
    string(16) ""Name","Address""
    [1]=>
    string(36) ""John Doe","5111 Fury Rd
Santa Cruz""
    [2]=>
    string(30) ""Jane Doe","321 Tess St Texas""
    [3]=>
    string(53) ""Josh Doe","653 1st St
Orlando Florida
United States""
  }
  [1]=>
  array(4) {
    [0]=>
    string(4) "Name"
    [1]=>
    string(8) "John Doe"
    [2]=>
    string(8) "Jane Doe"
    [3]=>
    string(8) "Josh Doe"
  }
  [2]=>
  array(4) {
    [0]=>
    string(7) "Address"
    [1]=>
    string(23) "5111 Fury Rd Santa Cruz"
    [2]=>
    string(17) "321 Tess St Texas"
    [3]=>
    &string(40) "653 1st St Orlando Florida United States"
  }
}

Thanks for the answer Andreas. Unfortunately, theres 100+ columns of data in each row. This would split the data into pairs. ie. [0]=>"First Name","Last Name" [1]=>"City","State"... etc — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:18
@user1512593 Then just add an appropriate amount of patterns. You can build the pattern with an for loop. `'/\"(.*?)\",\"(.*?)\",\"(.*?)\"/s';` <- is for three columns. Just keep adding the pattern over and over — Andreas, Aug 15 '17 at 15:35
Thanks. I thought it was crazy talk repeating the same thing 100+ times but it works great Andreas. Thanks! — user1512593, Aug 15 '17 at 15:56
@user1512593 It's not a solution I'm proud of but it if it works... Keep in mind, if one entry does not have the starting or ending " it will fail miserably — Andreas, Aug 15 '17 at 16:56

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '17 at 15:38

If you need to use preg_match_all() you could try this pattern to create an array of matches and then map str_getcsv() over the results; e.g:

<?php

$csvString = <<<CSV
"Name","Address"
"John Doe","5111 Fury Rd
Santa Cruz"
"Jane Doe","321 Tess St Texas"
"Josh Doe","653 1st St
Orlando Florida
United States
CSV;


preg_match_all('/(.*)(?:\n)/m', $csvString, $csvRows);

$csvData = array_map(function ($csvRow) {
    return str_getcsv($csvRow);
}, $csvRows[1]);

print_r($csvData);

Given your example input this yields:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => Name
            [1] => Address
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => John Doe
            [1] => 5111 Fury Rd
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => Santa Cruz"
        )

    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => Jane Doe
            [1] => 321 Tess St Texas
        )

    [4] => Array
        (
            [0] => Josh Doe
            [1] => 653 1st St
        )

    [5] => Array
        (
            [0] => Orlando Florida
        )

)

Hope this helps :)

PHP Regex Multiple Instances

2 Answers2