Can anyone help me with finding regular expression for the below
$string = "id=A12dk9-mds&name=4950";
I need to find regular expression to find a dynamic value (A12dk9-mds in this example).
i.e the dynamic content between = and &
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Will it always be this length and this format? So 6 letters or numbers hyphen 3 letters?alanmanderson– alanmanderson2012-09-20 21:46:28 +00:00Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 21:46
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hey Daedalus i tried preg_match("/id=*&", $string); , sorry am noobPaul Davis– Paul Davis2012-09-20 21:48:34 +00:00Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 21:48
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3why insist on using a regexp when PHP has a parse_str() function to do that job - php.net/manual/en/function.parse-str.phpMark Baker– Mark Baker2012-09-20 21:49:44 +00:00Commented Sep 20, 2012 at 21:49
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3 Answers
As @MarkBaker has stated, the best way to do this is not regex, but parse_str() since you are actually dealing with a query string of a url.
Therefore, the below should work fine:
parse_str($string,$arr);
echo $arr['id']; // A12dk9-mds
Comments
A simple regex can be used for that.
/id=([^&]*)&/
Explanation:
id=matches id=([^&]*)matches anything but the & symbol as much as possible and returns that&matches the &
As long as you know they will always be between a = and a & this will work.
PHP Code:
$string = "id=A12dk9-mds&name=4950";
preg_match('/id=([^&]*)&/',$string, $answer);
print_r($answer[1]);
5 Comments
Paul Davis
so it is like preg_match("/=([^&]*)&/", $string); huh >
alanmanderson
Note: depending on what you are trying to match this could produce false positives in the sense that if you have another place where you have =gibberish& then it will still match that part. I like my regex patterns to match exactly and only what I am looking for.
Aust
@ajon - True I added id before the equal sign to make sure you will only get the id value.
gen_Eric
Couldn't you also do
/id=(.*?)&/?Aust
@RocketHazmat - Yes you could.
RegEx is the wrong tool here. This looks like a query string, so let's use PHP's query string parser, parse_str.
$string = "id=A12dk9-mds&name=4950";
parse_str($string, $parsed);
echo $parsed['id'];