Hey everyone, have taken a bit of a break (a couple of years) from all things PHP and generally web related, but now a project has popped up that I am really interested in figuring out. I am so, so sorry if this ends up being a very long and confusing post, but I am really hoping somebody out there might have some experience in doing this sort of thing, or maybe it is just MUCH simpler than I have convinced myself of, and I am making things unnecessarily hard for myself.
First of all, I am not sure if this is as much of a coding question, or if I am just not managing to sort out the logic of it all in my head, but for some reason I just cant figure out where to get started.
I am not looking for someone to tell me what to write per say, but just any advice at all that can head me in the right direction.
Anyhow, here goes.. I have an automatically generated roster file, created by sabre airline solutions, that is automatically emailed out to all employees of the airline. It is a 28 day roster, and I am wanting to write a script of some sort that will automatically convert it into an ICS or Ical file for further integration with things I am doing. I have done a lot of reading about the formats of ics files, and I understand how they work, it is just writing something that will interpret the initial roster correctly that is stumping me, once I get the information out of it in a logical way, I think I can easily turn it into an ics. I was heading down the array pathway before, but I just keep getting to dead ends and methods that just arent practical. Here is a snippit from the original roster format:
"31 AKL7494 LO APW 1250 APW 1210* - APW 23:20 0450 0620
01 AKL7494 0630 0091 AKL 0730 APW 1220- 03:50 24:50 73P
AKL7494 1210 0094 APW 1310 AKL 1615* 04:05 00:30 73P
02 AKL7494 RST AKL 1645 AKL 0445* - AKL 0405 0535 34:15 12:00
03 AKL7506 0500 GT AKL 0500 HLZ 0700 02:00 -
AKL7506 0085 HLZ 0800 BNE 0840 03:40 00:30 73P
AKL7506 LO BNE 0910 BNE 0830* - BNE 23:20 0340 0710
04 AKL7506 0830 0074 BNE 0930 DUD 1610 03:40 00:50 73P
AKL7506 0075 DUD 1700 BNE 1745 03:45 00:30 73P
AKL7506 LO BNE 1815 BNE 1430* - BNE 20:15 0725 0945
05 AKL7506 LO APW 0050 APW 1210 - APW 11:20 0725 0945
AKL7506 1210 0094 APW 1310 AKL 1615* 04:05 -21:-4573P
AKL7506 1430 0097 BNE 1530 APW 0020 04:50 17:25 73P
06 AKL7506 RST AKL 1645 AKL 0445* - AKL 0450 0620 83:45 12:00 "
if a little clarification is needed.. (i know I needed it when I first began recieving these rosters!) the 31, 01, 02 etc are the dates of the month, the 31 only comes up if the month before ends halfway through a trip where the person is still away for work when the month turns over.
the AKL,APW,BNE etc are airport/location codes, LO is layover (eg spending the night there) the other various times are departure times, arrival times (all in local time to wherever the person happens to be at the time) and also flight times, total duty times. The airport codes with numbers (eg AKL7506) is the trip code, meaning for that whole period you will be with the same crew, and away from your home port/base.
The first problem I have encountered, is it is not consistent, some days will have 1 line, but layovers will take up one or two or more lines, so I cannot just separate the entries via line, i guess it has to be started wherever a numerical/date value begins the line? Also how do i split the data, based on white space in between (if that makes sense)
I hope maybe this makes a little sense to someone, I know somebody has managed to write exactly what I am trying to do, for the exact same roster system, but for a different purpose, but I have had no luck getting in touch with this person.
Thanks so much to anyone who can shed any light on this situation,
Anna
