PHP explode and set to empty string the missing pieces

Question

What's the best way to accomplish the following.

I have strings in this format:

$s1 = "name1|type1"; //(pipe is the separator)
$s2 = "name2|type2";
$s3 = "name3"; //(in some of them type can be missing)

Let's assume namen/typeN are strings and they can not contain a pipe.

Since I need to exctract the name/type separetly, I do:

$temp = explode('|', $s1);
$name = $temp[0];
$type = ( isset($temp[1]) ? $temp[1] : '' );

Is there an easier (smarter whatever faster) way to do this without having to do isset($temp[1]) or count($temp).

Thanks!

Answer 1

if(strstr($temp,"|"))
{
   $temp = explode($s1, '|');
   $name = $temp[0];
   $type = $temp[1];
}
else
{
   $name = $temp[0];
   //no type
}

Maybe?

Answer 2

Note the order of arguments for explode()

list($name,$type) = explode( '|',$s1);

$type will be NULL for $s3, though it will give a Notice

Answer 3

There is not need to do isset since $temp[1] will exist and content an empty value. This works fine for me:

$str = 'name|type';

// if theres nothing in 'type', then $type will be empty
list($name, $type) = explode('|', $str, 2);
echo "$name, $type";

Answer 4

list($name, $type) = explode('|', s1.'|');

Answer 5

I'm a fan of array_pop() and array_shift(), which don't error out if the array they use is empty.

In your case, that would be:

$temp = explode('|', $s1);
$name = array_shift($temp);
// array_shift() will return null if the array is empty,
// so if you really want an empty string, you can string
// cast this call, as I have done:
$type = (string) array_shift($temp);