Convert a comma-separated string containing quoted values into an array of associative arrays with hardcoded keys

Question

I need to convert a string from this:

"name1", "b", "2", "name2", "c", "3", "name3", "b", "2", ....

to an array like this:

$arr[0]['name'] = "name1";
$arr[0]['char'] = "b";
$arr[0]['qnt'] = "2";
$arr[1]['name'] = "name2";
$arr[1]['char'] = "c";
$arr[1]['qnt'] = "3";
$arr[2]['name'] = "name3";
$arr[2]['char'] = "b";
$arr[2]['qnt'] = "2";

I tried to use explode() to convert the string to an array but it does not work as needed.

• Aman: Please post the code you have used.
• Karel Petranek: $arr = explode(", ", $yourString) must work, post your code please...
• Ivan: php.net/manual/en/function.preg-split.php
• Luke Stevenson: Do you control the generation of the CSV string? If so, using a different delimiter (like ";") between each set would make parsing it alot easier. ie "name1", "b", "2"; "name2", "c", "3"; "name3", "b", "2"; ...

Answer 1

$input = '"name1", "b", "2", "name2", "c", "3", "name3", "b", "2"';
$input = str_replace('"', '', $input);
$input = explode(', ', $input);
$output = array();
$i = 0;
while ($i < count($input)) {
 $output[] = array(
 'name' => $input[$i++],
 'char' => $input[$i++],
 'qnt' => $input[$i++]
 );
}
print_r($output);

Output:

Array
(
 [0] => Array
 (
 [name] => name1
 [char] => b
 [qnt] => 2
 )
 [1] => Array
 (
 [name] => name2
 [char] => c
 [qnt] => 3
 )
 [2] => Array
 (
 [name] => name3
 [char] => b
 [qnt] => 2
 )
)

• Gordon: could have edited your deleted answer as well

Answer 2

If you do not care about the array keys being numeric, you can do:

$string = 'name1, b, 2, name2, c, 3, name3, b, 2';
print_r( array_chunk( explode(',', $string), 3 ) );

Answer 3

Parse the csv string containing quoted values, then split that flat array into 3-element chunks, then forge associative rows using hardcoded keys.

Code: (Demo)

$text = <<<TEXT
"name1", "b", "2", "name2", "c", "3", "name3", "b", "2"
TEXT;
var_export(
 array_map(
 fn($chunk) => array_combine(['name', 'char', 'qnt'], $chunk),
 array_chunk(str_getcsv($text), 3)
 )
);