Parse strictly formatted text containing multiple entries with no delimiting character

Question

I have a string containing multiple products orders which have been joined together without a delimiter.

I need to parse the input string and convert sets of three substrings into separate rows of data.

I tried splitting the string using split() and strstr() function, but could not generate the desired result.

How can I convert this statement into different columns?

RM is Malaysian Ringgit

From this statement:

"2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.42 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.6"

Into seperate row:

• 2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.4
• 2 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.6

And this 2 row into this table in DB:

Table: Products

Product Name	Quantity	Total Amount (RM)
Brew Coffeee Panas	2	7.4
Tongkat Ali Ais	2	8.6

*Note: the "total amount" substrings will reliably have a numeric value with precision to one decimal place.

Answer 1

You could use regex if your string format is consistent. Here's an expression that could do that:

(\d) x (.+?): RM(\d+\.\d)

Basic usage

$re = '/(\d) x (.+?): RM(\d+\.\d)/';
$str = '2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.42 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.6';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
var_export($matches);

Which gives

array (
  0 => 
  array (
    0 => '2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.4',
    1 => '2',
    2 => 'Brew Coffeee Panas',
    3 => '7.4',
  ),
  1 => 
  array (
    0 => '2 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.6',
    1 => '2',
    2 => 'Tongkat Ali Ais',
    3 => '8.6',
  ),
)

Group 0 will always be the full match, after that the groups will be quantity, product and price.

Try it online

Answer 2

• Capture one or more digits
• Match the space, x, space
• Capture one or more non-colon characters until the first occuring colon
• Match the colon, space, then RM
• Capture the float value that has a max decimal length of 1
  _{OP says in comment under question: it only take one decimal place for the amount}

There are no "lazy quantifiers" in my pattern, so the regex can move most swiftly.

This regex pattern is as Accurate as the sample data and requirement explanation allows, as Efficient as it can be because it only contains greedy quantifiers, as Concise as it can be thanks to the negated character class, and as Readable as the pattern can be made because there are no superfluous characters.

Code: (Demo)

var_export(
    preg_match_all('~(\d+) x ([^:]+): RM(\d+\.\d)~', $string, $m)
        ? array_slice($m, 1)  // omit the fullstring matches
        : []                  // if there are no matches
);

Output:

array (
  0 => 
  array (
    0 => '2',
    1 => '2',
  ),
  1 => 
  array (
    0 => 'Brew Coffeee Panas',
    1 => 'Tongkat Ali Ais',
  ),
  2 => 
  array (
    0 => '7.4',
    1 => '8.6',
  ),
)

You can add the PREG_SET_ORDER argument to the preg_match_all() call to aid in iterating the matches as rows.

preg_match_all('~(\d+) x ([^:]+): RM(\d+\.\d)~', $string, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER);
foreach ($matches as $match) {
    echo '<tr><td>' . implode('</td><td>', array_slice($match, 1)) . '</td></tr>';
}

Answer 3

The first thing I would do would be to perform a simple replacement using preg_replace to insert, with the aid of a a back-reference to the captured item, based upon the known format of a single decimal point. Anything beyond that single decimal point forms part of the next item - the quantity in this case.

$str="2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.42 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.625 x Koala Kebabs: RM15.23 x Fried Squirrel Fritters: RM32.4";

#   qty price
#   2   7.4
#   2   8.6
#   25  15.2
#   3   32.4



/*
    Our RegEx to find the decimal precision, 
    to split the string apart and the quantity
*/
$pttns=(object)array(
    'repchar'   =>  '@(RM\d{1,}\.\d{1})@',
    'splitter'  =>  '@(\|)@',
    'combo' =>  '@^((\d{1,}) x)(.*): RM(\d{1,}\.\d{1})$@'
);
# create a new version of the string with our specified delimiter - the PIPE
$str = preg_replace( $pttns->repchar, '$1|', $str );

# split the string intp pieces - discard empty items
$a=array_filter( preg_split( $pttns->splitter, $str, null ) );

#iterate through matches - find the quantity,item & price
foreach($a as $str){
    preg_match($pttns->combo,$str,$matches);
    $qty=$matches[2];
    $item=$matches[3];
    $price=$matches[4];
    
    printf('%s %d %d<br />',$item,$qty,$price);
}

Which yields:

Brew Coffeee Panas 2 7
Tongkat Ali Ais 2 8
Koala Kebabs 25 15
Fried Squirrel Fritters 3 32

Answer 4

You can use a regex like this:

/(\d+)\sx\s([^:]+):\sRM(\d+\.?\d?)(?=\d|$)/

Explanation:

• (\d+) captures one or more digits
• \s matches a whitespace character
• ([^:]+): captures one or more non : characters that come before a : character (you can also use something like [a-zA-Z0-9\s]+): if you know exactly which characters can exist before the : character - in this case lower case and upper case letters, digits 0 through 9 and whitespace characters)
• (\d+\.?\d?) captures one or more digits, followed by a . and another digit if they exist
• (?=\d|$) is a positive lookahead which matches a digit after the main expression without including it in the result, or the end of the string

You can also add the PREG_SET_ORDER flag to preg_match_all() to group the results:

PREG_SET_ORDER

Orders results so that $matches[0] is an array of first set of matches, $matches[1] is an array of second set of matches, and so on.

Code example:

<?php
    $txt = "2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.42 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.62 x B026 Kopi Hainan Kecil: RM312 x B006 Kopi Hainan Besar: RM19.5";
    $pattern = "/(\d+)\sx\s([^:]+):\sRM(\d+\.?\d?)(?=\d|$)/";

    if(preg_match_all($pattern, $txt, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER)) {
       print_r($matches);
    }
?>

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2 x Brew Coffeee Panas: RM7.4
            [1] => 2
            [2] => Brew Coffeee Panas
            [3] => 7.4
        )
    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2 x Tongkat Ali Ais: RM8.6
            [1] => 2
            [2] => Tongkat Ali Ais
            [3] => 8.6
        )
    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2 x B026 Kopi Hainan Kecil: RM31
            [1] => 2
            [2] => B026 Kopi Hainan Kecil
            [3] => 31
        )
    [3] => Array
        (
            [0] => 2 x B006 Kopi Hainan Besar: RM19.5
            [1] => 2
            [2] => B006 Kopi Hainan Besar
            [3] => 19.5
        )
)

See it live here php live editor and here regex tester.