Get string between characters with exception

Question

I'm trying to get a string in between two strings/characters. For example, I want to get the string "1" in between test= and ;:

Here is my working function:

function getStringInBetween($str, $start, $end){
    $str = ' ' . $str;
    $ini = strpos($str, $start);
    if ($ini == 0) return '';
    $ini += strlen($start);
    $len = strpos($str, $end, $ini) - $ini;
    return substr($str, $ini, $len);
}

$myString = 'ok=0;test=1;cool=2';

echo getStringInBetween('$myString', 'test=', ';'); // returned output: 1

echo getStringInBetween('$myString', 'cool=', ';'); // this doesn't work. This should output 2

But my question is, if I have to get the string in between cool=? I cannot get it with the function because the semi colon ; is not at the end. It needs to be dynamic. I don't know if the string I need is in the last part of the given string or not.

What can I do to the function that will still be able to get the string in between cool=? Also I have to have the semi-colon as the 3rd argument when calling the function.

Answer 1

You can use the explode function to split a string by a token, here use explode(";", $string) to obtain the following array array("ok=0", "test=1", "cool=2")

Then you can loop through the array and do a second call to explode:

foreach(explode(";", $string) as $pair)
{
   $array = explode("=", $pair);
   $key = $array[0];
   $value = $array[1];
   //Do something with $key and $value
}

Regarding your function, something like that should do the trick:

function getStringInBetween($str, $start, $end){
    $ini = strpos($str, $start);
    if ($ini == 0) return '';
    $ini += strlen($start);

    $endIndex = strpos($str, $end, $ini);
    if ($endIndex === false)
      return substr($str, $ini);
    else
      return substr($str, $ini, $endIndex - $ini);
}

Also you should check $ini against false and not 0 like that : if ($ini === false) return '';