Using regex to extract variables from a plain-text form letter?
- by Yaaqov
Hi - I'm looking for a good example of using Regular Expressions in PHP to "reverse engineer" a form letter (with a known format, of course) that has been pasted into a multiline textbox and sent to a script for processing.
So, for example, let's assume this is the original plain-text input (taken from a USDA press release):
WASHINGTON, April 5, 2010 - North
American Bison Co-Op, a New Rockford,
N.D., establishment is recalling
approximately 25,000 pounds of whole
beef heads containing tongues that may
not have had the tonsils completely
removed, which is not compliant with
regulations that require the removal
of tonsils from cattle of all ages,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
Food Safety and Inspection Service
(FSIS) announced today.
For clarity, the fields that are variables are highlighted below:
[pr_city=]WASHINGTON, [pr_date=]April 5, 2010 - [corp_name=]North
American Bison Co-Op, a [corp_city=]New Rockford,
[corp_state=]N.D., establishment is recalling
approximately [amount=]25,000 pounds of [product=]whole
beef heads containing tongues that may
not have had the tonsils completely
removed, which is not compliant with
regulations that require [reason=]the removal
of tonsils from cattle of all ages,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
Food Safety and Inspection Service
(FSIS) announced today.
How could I efficiently extract the contents of the
pr_city
pr_date
corp_name
corp_city
corp_state
amount
product
reason
fields from my example?
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
