php regular expression for dictionary string

Question

I could use some help writing a regular expression for this dictionary string (I don't use them all that often).

This is an example of the string dictionary:

O:8:"stdClass":5:{s:4:"sent";i:0;s:6:"graded";i:0;s:5:"score";i:0;s:6:"answer";s:14:"<p>Johnson</p>";s:8:"response";s:0:"";}

I want to extract Johnson from the string dictionary.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

This is a PHP serialized object. Don't use a regular expression. unserialize() the data and display the answer property accordingly.

unserialize($data);
echo $data->answer;

Answer 2

$str = 'O:8:"stdClass":5:{s:4:"sent";i:0;s:6:"graded";i:0;s:5:"score";i:0;s:6:"answer";s:14:"<p>Johnson</p>";s:8:"response";s:0:"";}';

$obj = unserialize($str);

echo $obj->answer;

This would be the correct answer, no regex needed. You may need some additional HTML parsing if you'd want the <p> tags removed. If the format will always remain the same (and only then!) simply remove the <p> and </p> tags.

Answer 3

It looks like you should be using unserialize() instead and then you can use preg_match to remove the <p> tags.

$obj = (unserialize('O:8:"stdClass":5:{s:4:"sent";i:0;s:6:"graded";i:0;s:5:"score";i:0;s:6:"answer";s:14:"<p>Johnson</p>";s:8:"response";s:0:"";}'));
preg_match('~<p>([^<]*)</p>~', $obj->answer, $ans);
print_r($ans[1]); //prints Johnson