Regex Help - PHP / XML

Question

I need to seperate each phrase between the pipes (|)
I have some code already to remove some useless junk at the beginning but don't what where to go next.

My code:

<style>
table, th, td {
border:1px solid black;
}
</style>
<?php

echo 'OK';

$xmlstr = file_get_contents('http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?input=planes+seen+from+dallas&appid=2UJ62E-Q6RT3T89P8');


$queryresult = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);

echo $queryresult->pod[0]->subpod[0]->plaintext . "<hr>"; //assumption / input
$work1 = $queryresult->pod[1]->subpod[0]->plaintext . "<hr>"; //result plaintext
$work2 = substr($work1, 19);
$work3 = utf8_decode($work2);
$work4 = str_replace(utf8_decode('Â'), '', $work3);
echo $work4;

//echo "<table >" . "<tr><th>Plane Name</th><th>Altitude</th><th>Angle</th></tr>" . "<tr><td>Sample</td></tr></table>"; //Late

echo "<br><br><h6>" . $queryresult . "</h6>";
?>

And here's the XML Files NOTE: content is in <plaintext>

<queryresult success="true" error="false" numpods="3" datatypes="Flight" timedout="" timedoutpods="" timing="3.39" parsetiming="0.391" parsetimedout="false" recalculate="" id="MSPa1551i7b4400e01ci84e0000651c4h328e38277i" host="http://www4b.wolframalpha.com" server="7" related="http://www4b.wolframalpha.com/api/v2/relatedQueries.jsp?id=MSPa1561i7b4400e01ci84e00005a6da8807558i27f&s=7" version="2.6"><pod title="Input interpretation" scanner="Identity" id="Input" position="100" error="false" numsubpods="1"><subpod title=""><plaintext>flights seen from Dallas, Texas</plaintext><img src="http://www4b.wolframalpha.com/Calculate/MSP/MSP1571i7b4400e01ci84e0000145h82ai4h4a9hae?MSPStoreType=image/gif&s=7" alt="flights seen from Dallas, Texas" title="flights seen from Dallas, Texas" width="199" height="18"/></subpod></pod><pod title="Result" scanner="Data" id="Result" position="200" error="false" numsubpods="1" primary="true"><subpod title=""><plaintext> | altitude | angle
ENY flight 3056 | 11500 feet | 23° up
Republic Airlines flight 4302 | 30000 feet | 11° up
Southwest Airlines flight 4966 | 7200 feet | 10° up
Delta Air Lines flight 1115 | 32000 feet | 6.9° up
NetJets flight 579 | 5900 feet | 6.9° up
 | type | slant distance
ENY flight 3056 | Embraer ERJ-145 | 5.5 miles NNW
Republic Airlines flight 4302 | Embraer 175 | 30 miles SE
Southwest Airlines flight 4966 | Boeing 737-800 | 7.7 miles N
Delta Air Lines flight 1115 | Boeing 757-200 | 48 miles ENE
NetJets flight 579 | Cessna Citation Excel | 9.3 miles ESE
(locations based on projections of delayed data)
(angles with respect to nominal horizon)</plaintext><img src="http://www4b.wolframalpha.com/Calculate/MSP/MSP1581i7b4400e01ci84e00003ea5887iecaa0i2a?MSPStoreType=image/gif&s=7" alt=" | altitude | angle ENY flight 3056 | 11500 feet | 23° up Republic Airlines flight 4302 | 30000 feet | 11° up Southwest Airlines flight 4966 | 7200 feet | 10° up Delta Air Lines flight 1115 | 32000 feet | 6.9° up NetJets flight 579 | 5900 feet | 6.9° up  | type | slant distance ENY flight 3056 | Embraer ERJ-145 | 5.5 miles NNW Republic Airlines flight 4302 | Embraer 175 | 30 miles SE Southwest Airlines flight 4966 | Boeing 737-800 | 7.7 miles N Delta Air Lines flight 1115 | Boeing 757-200 | 48 miles ENE NetJets flight 579 | Cessna Citation Excel | 9.3 miles ESE (locations based on projections of delayed data) (angles with respect to nominal horizon)" title=" | altitude | angle ENY flight 3056 | 11500 feet | 23° up Republic Airlines flight 4302 | 30000 feet | 11° up Southwest Airlines flight 4966 | 7200 feet | 10° up Delta Air Lines flight 1115 | 32000 feet | 6.9° up NetJets flight 579 | 5900 feet | 6.9° up  | type | slant distance ENY flight 3056 | Embraer ERJ-145 | 5.5 miles NNW Republic Airlines flight 4302 | Embraer 175 | 30 miles SE Southwest Airlines flight 4966 | Boeing 737-800 | 7.7 miles N Delta Air Lines flight 1115 | Boeing 757-200 | 48 miles ENE NetJets flight 579 | Cessna Citation Excel | 9.3 miles ESE (locations based on projections of delayed data) (angles with respect to nominal horizon)" width="496" height="456"/></subpod><states count="2"><state name="More" input="Result__More"/><state name="Show metric" input="Result__Show metric"/></states></pod><pod title="Sky map" scanner="Data" id="SkyMap:FlightData" position="300" error="false" numsubpods="1"><subpod title=""><plaintext/><img src="http://www4b.wolframalpha.com/Calculate/MSP/MSP1591i7b4400e01ci84e000035g7ag9dd130609a?MSPStoreType=image/gif&s=7" alt="" title="" width="400" height="400"/></subpod></pod><assumptions count="1"><assumption type="SubCategory" word="dallas" template="Assuming ${desc1}. Use ${desc2} instead" count="9"><value name="{Dallas, Texas, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (Texas, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.Texas.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, Georgia, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (Georgia, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.Georgia.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, Oregon, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (Oregon, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.Oregon.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, NorthCarolina, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (North Carolina, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.NorthCarolina.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, Pennsylvania, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (Pennsylvania, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.Pennsylvania.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, BritishColumbia, Canada}" desc="Dallas (Canada)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.BritishColumbia.Canada--"/><value name="{Dallas, Wisconsin, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (Wisconsin, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.Wisconsin.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, Maine, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (Maine, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.Maine.UnitedStates--"/><value name="{Dallas, SouthDakota, UnitedStates}" desc="Dallas (South Dakota, USA)" input="*DPClash.CityE.dallas-_**Dallas.SouthDakota.UnitedStates--"/></assumption></assumptions><sources count="2"><source url="http://www.wolframalpha.com/sources/CityDataSourceInformationNotes.html" text="City data"/><source url="http://www.wolframalpha.com/sources/FlightDataSourceInformationNotes.html" text="Flight data"/></sources></queryresult>

I have some code already to regex out some useless junk at the beginning I don't see any regex at all? — cbreezier
– cbreezier, Commented Jan 26, 2015 at 23:52
I'm not sure you need a regex for this, maybe to correct the ampersands for the simplexml element. foreach($queryresult->pod as $text) { $pipeddata = explode('|', $text->subpod->plaintext); print_r($pipeddata); } ?> — chris85
– chris85, Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 3:15

Casimir et Hippolyte · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-27 16:21:34Z

1

[edit] It seems that the entity problem is only due to a copy/paste/typo as @ThW noticed it. So, the way to go is to use XMLReader to extract the data.

Advantage: it is the fastest XML parser available in PHP (because it doesn't need to build a DOM tree, it's an event based parser). Even it is a bit slower than a regex approach, It uses less memory and doesn't need to load the full document.

To extract the string:

$url = 'http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?input=planes+seen+from+dallas&appid=2UJ62E-Q6RT3T89P8';

$parser = new XMLReader;
$parser->open($url);

while ($parser->read()) {
    if ($parser->nodeType === XMLReader::ELEMENT) {

        while ($parser->name === 'pod' && $parser->getAttribute('title') !== 'Result')
            $parser->next('pod'); // jump to the next pod node 

        if ($parser->name === 'plaintext') {
            $str = $parser->readString();
            $parser->close();    
            break;
        }
    }
}

Then you can produce a result from the extracted string, for example a multi-dimensional array by flights:

$lines = explode("\n", $str);
$result = array();

foreach ($lines as $line) {
    $fields = explode(' | ', $line);
    $flight = array_shift($fields);

    if ($flight === '')
        $cols = $fields;
    elseif (isset($fields[1])) {
        $result[$flight][$cols[0]] = $fields[0];
        $result[$flight][$cols[1]] = $fields[1];
    } 
}

print_r($result);

[old answer] Unfortunately there's a problem with entities (with the & character in attributes) that makes fail XMLReader (that was the best way in your case).

So, a quick dirty way:

$pattern = '~title="Result".*?<plaintext>\K[^<]+~s';

if (preg_match($pattern, $xml, $m)) {
    $result = array_map("ltrim", preg_split('~[\n|]\s*~', $m[0], -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));
    print_r($result);
}

or to be a little more efficient you can change the pattern to:

~title="Result"(?:[^<]+|<(?!plaintext))*+<plaintext>\K[^<]+~s

edited Jan 27, 2015 at 16:21

answered Jan 27, 2015 at 0:24

Casimir et Hippolyte

90k5 gold badges102 silver badges131 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

ThW Over a year ago

I think the & is an copy+paste error. If you open the url in the question it returns valid xml.

Casimir et Hippolyte Over a year ago

@ThW: indeed, I have udapted my answer.

Oliver-H-Miller Over a year ago

@CasimiretHippolyte any chance u could put this in a table?

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Regex Help - PHP / XML

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related