parsing

[DuaneCawaling]

hi, my group is developing an sms feture.

in this feature a certain sms message should be messaged by the user/subscriber. one of the sub-feature is ordering.

 

a certain text  patter should be followed: SMART<space>WAL<space>BUY<space>"order"

example: SMART WAL BUY 2-A,1-B,3-D

 

in 2-A, whew 2 is the quantity and A is the item tag

 

what would be the best solution to use the explode(); function?

first is, there are other keywords used like "BAL" or "MENU" other than "BUY". second after the "BUY" keyword, i would like to use the "-" as a delimiter to separate the quantity and item tag.

 

please share your knowledge on the topic

comments and suggestions are ALWAYS welcome 

[teynon]

You should explode this three times. First, you are getting the parameters. The second time, getting the values of what they are buying. The third, you are breaking down the details of the item.

 

$string = "SMART WAL BUY 2-A,1-B,3-D";

$parameters = explode(" ", $string);
if ($parameters[0] == "SMART") {
    if ($parameters[1] == "WAL") {
        if ($parameters[2] == "BUY") {
            $purchases = explode(",", $parameters[3]);
            foreach ($purchases as $purchase) {
                $itemInfo = explode("-", $purchase");
                addToOrder($itemInfo[0], $itemInfo[1]); // Create function for saving order, addToOrder($qty, $item);
            }
        }
    }
}

[AyKay47]

Depending on how complex the subject string can get, I might look into using a PCRE for this.

Could save you a lot of coding.

[haku]

what would be the best solution

Hard to tell, when you haven't told us what you are trying to do. You described some text, but didn't say what you want to do with it. Are you testing it to see if it's valid? Converting it to something else? Something else?

[DuaneCawaling]

thank you for the advice, i've followed the tips above. the next concern now is accesing 3 different database.

 

lets say A,B,D are present in three different databases. and i want to retrieve their corresponding prices and total them.

what would be the fates and efficient way?am i going to code 3 different mysql_query's?

[DuaneCawaling]

Hard to tell, when you haven't told us what you are trying to do. You described some text, but didn't say what you want to do with it. Are you testing it to see if it's valid? Converting it to something else? Something else?

i wanna compute their total. the items' information is in a database. and by parsing them as such i can now get each of their prices and add them. but i dont know on what should i code first.

[haku]

$string = "SMART WAL BUY 2-A,1-B,3-D";

preg_match('/^SMART WAL (BUY|BAL|MENU) (.+?)$/', $string, $matches);

if(isset($matches[2]))

{

  $elements = explode(',', $matches[2]);

  foreach($element as $e)

  {

    $pieces = explode('-', trim($e));

    $quantity = $pieces[0];

    $tag = $pieces[1];


    // do something with the $quantity and $tag here

  }

}

Edited March 4, 2013 by haku