CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexpreg-matchpreg-match-all
Kendrick
Kendrick

Reputation: 43

preg_match to return multiple values from string

I want to extract two values from some URLs.

Example URLs:

I want extract the full game name and its short name separately ignoring the -game-play part at the end of the URL.

I've tried the following code which returns 'ck', 'hb', 'vb', 'sc', but not the full name.

preg_match("/(?<=-)[^-]*(?=-game-play)/", $uri, $game);

Actual results I am getting:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  string(2) "ck"
}

Expected Results:

case:1 (In case of example 1) -  array(2) {
  [0]=>
  string(7) "cricket"
  [1]=>
  string(2) "ck"
}

case:2 (In case of example 2) - array(2) {
  [0]=>
  string(9) "hand-ball"
  [1]=>
  string(2) "hb"  
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1426

Answers (3)

The fourth bird
The fourth bird

Reputation: 163362

If the parts before the short name are always more than 3 chars and the short name always consists of 2 chars [a-zA-Z] you could use 2 capturing groups, using quantifiers {3,} and {2} to match the characters.

\b(\w{3,}(?:-(?:\w{3,}))*)-(\w{2})-game-play\b

Explanation

  • \b Word boundary
  • ( Capture group 1
    • \w{3,} Match 3+ times a word char
    • (?:-\w{3,})* Repeat 0+ times matching - and 3 or more word chars
  • ) close group
  • ( Capture group 2
    • [a-zA-Z]{2} Match 2 times a word char (As per the comments)
  • ) Close group
  • -game-play Match literally
  • \b Word boundary

Regex demo | Php demo

Another option is to use preg_split and split on 2 chars a-z surrounded by hyphens in a capturing group and match the rest:

$pattern = "/-([a-z]{2})-.*/";
$str = "cricket-ck-game-play";
print_r(preg_split($pattern, $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE | PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));

Result

Array
(
    [0] => cricket
    [1] => ck
)

Php demo

Upvotes: 1

Emma
Emma

Reputation: 27723

Maybe, this expression might be somewhat close to what you have in mind:

(.*)-(.{2})(?=-game-play)

Demo 1

or 

(.*)-(.*)(?=-game-play)

Demo 2

Upvotes: 1

FoulFoot
FoulFoot

Reputation: 654

preg_match("/(.+)-([a-z]{2})-/i", $uri, $game);

Grabs everything before two letters bordered by dashes, and then grabs those two letters.

Upvotes: 3

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