Parse a formatted string containing comma-separated key=value expressions

Question

I have a string comma separated where I want to get 2 values in variables. How can I accomplish it.

$responseData = "Data: invoice=1216,card=AMEX";

I am looking for value of Invoice and Card.

I tried using instring but not getting value I want.

Answer 1

sscanf()

You can use sscanf() to achieve this result.

sscanf() takes the same format as printf(), allowing you to provide a variable and expected format string, and will return the matching results.

For example:

list($invoice, $card) = sscanf($responseData, "Data: invoice=%d,card=%s");
var_dump($invoice); // int(1216)
var_dump($card);    // string(4) "AMEX"

Community wiki of Mark Baker's answer in the comments above.

explode()

You can also do this manually by breaking up the string by delimiters with explode(). The Data: component is irrelevant, so trim it off, then split by commas, then split by = to get a key => value pair.

For example:

// Remove the Data: component
$responseData = ltrim($responseData, 'Data: ');

$example = array();
// Split by commas
foreach (explode(',', $responseData) as $value) {
    // Split by equals
    list ($k, $v) = explode('=', $value);
    $example[$k] = $v;
}

var_dump($example);
// array(2) {
//   ["invoice"]=>
//   string(4) "1216"
//   ["card"]=>
//   string(4) "AMEX"
// }