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

Answer 1

Use a regex: preg_grep function,

I don't know the format of english postcodes but you could go with something like:

(-[a-zA-Z0-9]+-)+

This matches

• "-Accountants-"
• "-BN31GE-"

You can then proceed at taking always the second value or you can enhance you regex to match exactly english postcodes, something like maybe

 ([A-Z0-9]{6})