StringExtractComponent for CakePHP

Hi folks, I have just finished creating my first CakePHP component and I wanted to share it with the community.  After I finish writing this article, I will be submitting it to CakePHP for inclusion.

The component is called StringExtractComponent.  As you may guess, it extracts content from a piece of content.  I have created this component to mimic the STREXTRACT function in Microsoft Visual FoxPro.  I have come to fall in love with this function because it makes retrieving data from a string with a start and end delimiter. I’ve also created two other examples with SQL substring between two characters SQL substring between two characters as well as a String Extract Extension Method with C#.

To help you understand how it is used, I read the contents of one of my articles into a string.  I then proceed to extract a specific section that is contained within the code syntaxes that exist in the article and it is important to truncate a string.

The StringExtract Component:
app/controllers/component/string_extract.php

[code]<?php
/***************************************************
* StringExtract Component
*
* In Visual FoxPro there is an excellent function called STREXTRACT
* that allows you to pass in a start and optional end delimiter
* and it returns the text between the start and end delimiter.
*
* This is a PHP version of the same function to save time having
* to find and substring it each time.
*
* @copyright    Copyright 2009, Jamie Munro
* @link         https://www.endyourif.com
* @author       Jamie Munro
* @version      1.0
* @license      MIT
*/
class StringExtractComponent extends Object {
 /*************************************************
 * str_extract parses out and returns the text specified between start and end delimiters
 *
 * @param string $content String containing the content to parse
 * @param string $begindelim String containing the text of where to start parsing
 * @param string $enddelim String containing the text of where to end parsing
 * @param int $occur Integer defining which instance of the $begin parameter
 * @return string
 * @access public
 */
 function str_extract($content, $begindelim, $enddelim = “”, $occur = 0) {
  $parsedContent = “”;
  // don’t bother doing any work if content is empty
  if (strlen($content)) {
   $count = 0;
   $start = 0;
   // start a loop for the occurance
   do {

    // get the starting position of the content
    $start = strpos($content, $begindelim, $start);

    // don’t bother doing any more if start was not found
    if ($start === false) {
     break;
    } else {
     // since we found it, we want to add the length
     // of the begin delimiter to it so it doesn’t get
     // included when we parse the string
     $start += strlen($begindelim);
    }

    $count++;
   } while ($count <= $occur);

   // if start is false, we didn’t find it, so we should not parse anything
   if ($start !== false) {
    // if $end is nothing, set the end of the parsing to the length of the content
    $end = (bool)false;
    if (strlen($enddelim)) {
     // find the end delimiter
     $end = strpos($content, $enddelim, $start);
    }
    // if enddelim was not found or not provided set the end to the length of the content
    if ($end === false) {
     $end = strlen($content);
    }

    // now we have the start and end, parse it out
    $parsedContent = substr($content, $start, $end – $start);
   }
  }

  return $parsedContent;
 }
}
?>
[/code]

Here is an example of how to use the component:

[code]<?php
class TestsController extends AppController {

 var $uses = array();
 var $components = array(‘StringExtract’);

 function index() {
  $content = file_get_contents(‘https://www.endyourif.com/the-importance-of-database-indexing/’);

  $start = ‘<pre class=”php” style=”font-family:monospace;”>’;
  $end = ‘</pre>’;

  $output = $this->StringExtract->str_extract($content, $start, $end, 3);
  echo $output;
  exit;
 }
}
?>
[/code]The above code stores the results of my database indexing article into the variable $content.  I then specify the start and end delimiter of where the content I want returned is.  I also pass in 3, indicating that I want the 4th occurrence of the code syntax in this article. To make this a little prettier you can always use Custom Fonts using font-face with CSS. If the TestsController is run it returns the following:

[code]<ol>
<li style=”font-weight: normal; vertical-align:top;”>
<div style=”font: normal normal 1em/1.2em monospace; margin:0; padding:0; background:none; vertical-align:top;”>ALTER TABLE `users` ADD INDEX ( `email` )</div>
</li>
</ol>
[/code]That’s it, I hope you find this component as useful as I have.