PHP: How can I explode a string by commas, but not wheres the commas are within quotes?

Question

I need to explode my string input into an array at the commas. However the string contains commas inside quotes.

Input:

$line = \'TRUE\',\'59\',\'A l         


        

Answer 1

It seems you do not want to split your string by commas, but by the succession of quote+comma+quote ?

If so, the preg_split function might help, here.

For example, using this portion of code :

$line = "'TRUE','59','A large number is 10,000'";
$parts = preg_split("/','/", $line);
var_dump($parts);

I get the following output :

array
  0 => string ''TRUE' (length=5)
  1 => string '59' (length=2)
  2 => string 'A large number is 10,000'' (length=25)

Starting with that, it's now a matter of removing the first and last quotes of the $line string, before calling preg_split -- as those are delimiters, and don't match the splitting pattern.

Answer 2

Since you are using comma seperated values, you can use str_getcsv.

str_getcsv($line, ",", "'");

Will return:

Array
(
    [0] => TRUE
    [1] => 59
    [2] => A large number is 10,000
)

Answer 3

You can explode on commas that are immediately followed by a single quote with preg_split() using positive lookahead. This will preserve your single quotes in the output array.

Code: (Demo)

$line = "'TRUE','59','A large number is 10,000'";
var_export(preg_split("/,(?=')/",$line));

Output:

array (
  0 => '\'TRUE\'',
  1 => '\'59\'',
  2 => '\'A large number is 10,000\'',
)

*fyi, the slashes in the result array are just the product of escaping done by var_export().

print_r() shows this (because it doesn't single-quote wrap its values):

Array
(
    [0] => 'TRUE'
    [1] => '59'
    [2] => 'A large number is 10,000'
)