How to parse returned php data

Question

I am accessing an external PHP server feed (not a real link):

$raw = file_get_contents('http://www.domain.com/getResults.php');

that returns data in the following context:

<pre>Array   
(   
    [RequestResult] => Array   
        (   
            [Response] => Success   
            [Value] => 100
            [Name] => Abracadabra
        )   
)   
</pre>

But I can't figure out how to handle this response... I would like to be able to grab the [Value] value and the [Name] value but my PHP skills are pretty weak... Additionally if there is a way to handle this with JavaScript (I'm a little better with JavaScript) then I could consider building my routine as a client side function...

Can anyone suggest a way to handle this feed response?

Answer 1

The script on the other side can return a JSON string of the array, and your client script can easily read it. See json_encode() and json_decode(). http://www.php.net/json-encode and http://www.php.net/json-decode

What you are doing on the "server" script is actually to var_dump the variable. var_dump is actually used more for debugging to see what a variable actually contains, not for data transfer.

On server script:

<?php

header("Content-Type: application/json");
$arr_to_output = array();

// ..  fill up array

echo json_encode($arr_to_output);

?>

The output of the script would be something like ['element1', 'element2'].

On client script:

<?php

$raw = file_get_contents('http://example.com/getData.php');

$arr = json_decode($raw, true); // true to make sure it returns array. else it will return object.

?>

Alternative

If the structure of the data is fixed this way, then you can try to do it dirty using regular expressions.

On client script:

<?php

$raw = file_get_contents('http://example.com/getData.php');

$arr = array('RequestResult'=>array());
preg_match('`\[Response\]\s\=\>\s([^\r\n]+)`is',$raw,$m);
$arr['RequestResult']['Response'] = $m[1];
preg_match('`\[Value\]\s\=\>\s([^\r\n]+)`is',$raw,$m);
$arr['RequestResult']['Value'] = $m[1];
preg_match('`\[Name\]\s\=\>\s([^\r\n]+)`is',$raw,$m);
$arr['RequestResult']['Name'] = $m[1];

// $arr is populated as the same structure as the one in the output.

?>

Answer 2

does $raw[RequestResult][Value] not work? I think the data is just a nested hash table

Answer 3

How about something like this

function responseToArray($raw)
{
   $result = array();

  foreach(explode("\n", $raw) as $line)
  {
    $line = trim($line);
    if(stripos($line, " => ") === false)
    {
      continue;
    }
    $toks = explode(' => ', $line);
    $k = str_replace(array('[',']'), "", $toks[0]);
    $result[$k] = $toks[1]; 


  }
  return $result;
}

Answer 4

Two possible solutions:

Solution #1 Change one line at the source:

It looks like getResults.php is doing a print_r. If that print_r could be changed to var_export you would get a PHP-parseable string to feed to eval:

$raw = file_get_contents('http://www.domain.com/getResults.php');
$a= eval($raw);
echo($raw['RequestResult']['Value']);

Be warned, eval'ing raw data from an external source (then echo()'ing it out) is not very secure

Solution #2 Parse with a regex:

<?php

$s= <<<EOS
<pre>Array   
(   
    [RequestResult] => Array   
        (   
            [Response] => Success   
            [Value] => 100
            [Name] => Abracadabra
        )   
)   
</pre>
EOS;

if (preg_match_all('/\[(\w+)\]\s+=>\s+(.+)/', $s, $m)) {
 print_r(array_combine($m[1], $m[2]));
}

?>

And now $a would contain: $a['Value']==100 and $a['Name']=='Abracadabra' etc.