PHP regex adding items to array which that is into php file

Question

in one of my php file content have this below codes:

<?php

return [

    // ...

    'providers' => [
        Illuminate\Auth\AuthServiceProvider::class,
        // ...
    ],


    'aliases' => [
        // ...
        'Form' => Collective\Html\FormFacade::class,
        'Html' => Collective\Html\HtmlFacade::class,
    ],

];

here i want to know how can i add some item to providers array and save it the same path with file name?

for exapmle i want to add Hekmatinasser\Verta\VertaServiceProvider::class into array and array should be:

<?php

return [

    // ...

    'providers' => [
        Illuminate\Auth\AuthServiceProvider::class,
        Hekmatinasser\Verta\VertaServiceProvider::class
        // ...
    ],


    //...

];

can we add and save it into file?

Answer 1

This is usually bad, and changing a config file like this, is not something i would do. There must be a better solution if you told us why you want to change the file. But, a quick hack would look something like this.

Instead of regex, i used a different approach, we can import the config array into a variable, loop over every item, and print it with the specific syntax, and some basic formatting.

$filename = "config.php";
$config = include $filename;


// Change array here, like this
$config['providers'][] = 'Hekmatinasser\Verta\VertaServiceProvider';


$string = "<?php\n\nreturn [\n";

foreach ($config as $key => $value) {
    $string .= "\n\t'$key' => [\n";
    if (isset($value[0])) {
        // Numeric array
        foreach ($value as $numeric_value) {
            $string .= "\t\t$numeric_value::class,\n";
        }

    } else {
        // Associative array
        foreach ($value as $assoc_key => $assoc_value) {
            $string .= "\t\t'$assoc_key' => $assoc_value::class,\n";
        }

    }
    $string .= "\t\t\n],";
}

$string .= "\n\n];";


$file = fopen($filename, "w") or die("Unable to open file!");
fwrite($file, $string);
fclose($file);