How to convert PascalCase to pascal_case?

Question

If I had:

$string = \"PascalCase\";

I need

\"pascal_case\"

Does PHP offer a function for this purpose?

Answer 1

Try this on for size:

$tests = array(
  'simpleTest' => 'simple_test',
  'easy' => 'easy',
  'HTML' => 'html',
  'simpleXML' => 'simple_xml',
  'PDFLoad' => 'pdf_load',
  'startMIDDLELast' => 'start_middle_last',
  'AString' => 'a_string',
  'Some4Numbers234' => 'some4_numbers234',
  'TEST123String' => 'test123_string',
);

foreach ($tests as $test => $result) {
  $output = from_camel_case($test);
  if ($output === $result) {
    echo "Pass: $test => $result\n";
  } else {
    echo "Fail: $test => $result [$output]\n";
  }
}

function from_camel_case($input) {
  preg_match_all('!([A-Z][A-Z0-9]*(?=$|[A-Z][a-z0-9])|[A-Za-z][a-z0-9]+)!', $input, $matches);
  $ret = $matches[0];
  foreach ($ret as &$match) {
    $match = $match == strtoupper($match) ? strtolower($match) : lcfirst($match);
  }
  return implode('_', $ret);
}

Output:

Pass: simpleTest => simple_test
Pass: easy => easy
Pass: HTML => html
Pass: simpleXML => simple_xml
Pass: PDFLoad => pdf_load
Pass: startMIDDLELast => start_middle_last
Pass: AString => a_string
Pass: Some4Numbers234 => some4_numbers234
Pass: TEST123String => test123_string

This implements the following rules:

1. A sequence beginning with a lowercase letter must be followed by lowercase letters and digits;
2. A sequence beginning with an uppercase letter can be followed by either:
   • one or more uppercase letters and digits (followed by either the end of the string or an uppercase letter followed by a lowercase letter or digit ie the start of the next sequence); or
   • one or more lowercase letters or digits.

Answer 2

Laravel 5.6 provides a very simple way of doing this:

 /**
 * Convert a string to snake case.
 *
 * @param  string  $value
 * @param  string  $delimiter
 * @return string
 */
public static function snake($value, $delimiter = '_'): string
{
    if (!ctype_lower($value)) {
        $value = strtolower(preg_replace('/(.)(?=[A-Z])/u', '$1'.$delimiter, $value));
    }

    return $value;
}

What it does: if it sees that there is at least one capital letter in the given string, it uses a positive lookahead to search for any character (.) followed by a capital letter ((?=[A-Z])). It then replaces the found character with it's value followed by the separactor _.

Answer 3

If you use Laravel framework, you can use just snake_case() method.

Answer 4

A version that doesn't use regex can be found in the Alchitect source:

decamelize($str, $glue='_')
{
    $counter  = 0;
    $uc_chars = '';
    $new_str  = array();
    $str_len  = strlen($str);

    for ($x=0; $x<$str_len; ++$x)
    {
        $ascii_val = ord($str[$x]);

        if ($ascii_val >= 65 && $ascii_val <= 90)
        {
            $uc_chars .= $str[$x];
        }
    }

    $tok = strtok($str, $uc_chars);

    while ($tok !== false)
    {
        $new_char  = chr(ord($uc_chars[$counter]) + 32);
        $new_str[] = $new_char . $tok;
        $tok       = strtok($uc_chars);

        ++$counter;
    }

    return implode($new_str, $glue);
}

Answer 5

If you are looking for a PHP 5.4 version and later answer here is the code:

function decamelize($word) {
      return $word = preg_replace_callback(
        "/(^|[a-z])([A-Z])/",
        function($m) { return strtolower(strlen($m[1]) ? "$m[1]_$m[2]" : "$m[2]"); },
        $word
    );

}
function camelize($word) {
    return $word = preg_replace_callback(
        "/(^|_)([a-z])/",
        function($m) { return strtoupper("$m[2]"); },
        $word
    );

} 

Answer 6

So here is a one-liner:

strtolower(preg_replace('/(?|([a-z\d])([A-Z])|([^\^])([A-Z][a-z]))/', '$1_$2', $string));