PHP Url string to array

Question

I'm trying to find out if there's any function that would split a string like:

keyword=flower|type=outdoors|colour=red

to array:

array('keyword' => 'flower', 'type' => 'outdoors', 'colour' => 'red')

At the moment I built a custom function, which uses explode to first split elements with the separator | and then each of those with assignment symbol =, but is there perhaps a native function which would do it out of the box by specifying the string separator?

The function I've written looks like this:

public static function splitStringToArray(
 $string = null,
 $itemDivider = '|',
 $keyValueDivider = '='
) {
 if (empty($string)) {
 return array();
 }
 $items = explode($itemDivider, $string);
 if (empty($items)) {
 return array();
 }
 $out = array();
 foreach($items as $item) {
 $itemArray = explode($keyValueDivider, $item);
 if (
 count($itemArray) > 1 &&
 !empty($itemArray[1])
 ) {
 $out[$itemArray[0]] = $itemArray[1];
 }
 }
 return $out;
}

• h2ooooooo: There isn't. However, you can do it in a one liner using the parse_str function (and changing |'s to &'s): parse_str(str_replace('|', '&', $string), $array);
• Spencer Mark: Fantastic - can you post it as an answer so that I can mark it as answered?

Answer 1

$string = "keyword=flower|type=outdoors|colour=red";
$string = str_replace('|', '&', $string);
parse_str($string, $values);
$values=array_filter($values); // Remove empty pairs as per your comment
print_r($values);

Output

Array
(
 [keyword] => flower
 [type] => outdoors
 [colour] => red
)

Fiddle

• Spencer Mark: Thanks - I'll accept this answer, which is what @h2ooooooo has also suggested earlier in the shorter format.
• Hanky Panky: Oops I was so interested in writing an answer I didn't look at the comment or I wouldn't have answered since you had your solution already.
• h2ooooooo: @SpencerMark No worries - this answer is more descriptive and has a demo as well as output. Usually when I have less time I just post a quick comment rather than an answer. :)
• Spencer Mark: Thanks guys - appreciate your quick response.
• Hanky Panky: If you want to remove all the empty elements from the final array you can just add this line at the end. $values=array_filter($values);

Answer 2

Use regexp to solve this problem.

([^=]+)\=([^\|]+)

http://regex101.com/r/eQ9tW8/1

• Lix: Regex seems a little over-kill for this situation don't you think?

Answer 3

The issue is that your chosen format of representing variables in a string is non-standard. If you are able to change the | delimiter to a & character you would have (what looks like) a query string from a URL - and you'll be able to parse that easily:

$string = "keyword=flower&type=outdoors&colour=red";
parse_str( $string, $arr );
var_dump( $arr );
// array(3) { ["keyword"]=> string(6) "flower" ["type"]=> string(8) "outdoors" ["colour"]=> string(3) "red" }

I would recommend changing the delimiter at the source instead of manually replacing it with replace() or something similar (if possible).