php extract UK postal code and validate it

Question

I have some text blocks like

John+and+Co-Accountants-Hove-BN31GE-2959519

I need a function to extract the postcode "BN31GE". It may happen to not exist and have a text block without postcode so the function must also validate if the extracted text is valid postcode .

John+and+Co-Accountants-Hove-2959519

Answer 1

Find below code to extract valid UK postal code. It return array if post code found otherwise empty.

<?php
$getPostcode="";
$str="John+and+Co-Accountants-Hove-BN31GE-2959519";
$getArray = explode("-",$str);
if(is_array($getArray) && count($getArray)>0) {
    foreach($getArray as $key=>$val) {
        if(preg_match("/^(([A-PR-UW-Z]{1}[A-IK-Y]?)([0-9]?[A-HJKS-UW]?[ABEHMNPRVWXY]?|[0-9]?[0-9]?))\s?([0-9]{1}[ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]{2})$/i",strtoupper($val),$postcode)) {
            $getPostcode = $postcode[0];
        }
    }
}
print"<pre>";
print_r($getPostcode); 
?>