Looking for Code which can Parse Product Feed

[CALLOW]

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Hi everybody,
i am running mobile affiliate site & like most of the affiliates i am facing the same problem i.e updating feeds
it keeps on changing on daily basis & the format in which it is provided is not compatible with our database so that i can upload it directly in my database
i have even asked them i.e my merchants to provide feeds according to the format i need & its almost resolved now but still i need some code which can parse the whole feed if anybody can help me in sorting out this problem then feel free to reply.
like i want to parse particular 1 coloumn which is something like that
Sony Eric. K750i for 0.00 when you connect to Orange Your Plan 120 .With this offer you get 6 months at £4.99
& i want this to be parsed out
like handset name, plan name, offer, rental everything in seperate coloumn

Cheers
Jack

[drivetowin]

Unless the wording follows a regular pattern so that you have words you can 'latch' the parsing on to then splitting a single string as you suggest automatically and reliably is nigh on impossible.

If the wording does follow a regular pattern then assuming you are using php you should be able to parse it using a combination of strpos and substr statements.

[CALLOW]

Hello Kbudden
Thanks for replying
Yeah i am using php & it is not impossible to parse it one can parse it but it will usually take lot of time which i can utilize in promoting my website
So i am looking for some code which will automatically parse it
Money is not an issue if somebody is looking to get paid for this i am ready.
i am repeating that string again which i want to be parsed

Sony Eric. K750i for 0.00 when you connect to Orange Your Plan 300 .With this offer you get 12 Months Half Price Line Rental

& this is one of the string from 2000 rows all are in the different row with different plan & incentive but in the same coloumn

Cheers

[mike_01]

If im not wrong...even i tried getting something like this bt never succeed...
Let me know if you could get something like this..
All the best....

[dmorison]

If you could post a few more examples that would help. It's the difference between being impossible (if the text is not predictable) and actually being relatively straight forward.

Post about 5 examples and we should be able to give more advice...

[CALLOW]

Hello dmorison
I am posting some of the strings here from that feed these are from the same coloumn of excel sheet but each in different row

1. Sony Eric. K750i for 0.00 when you connect to Orange Off Peak 1000 Crossnet .With this offer you get £160 Cashback

2. Sony Eric. K750i for 0.00 when you connect to Orange 1000 MINUTES OFFPEAK .With this offer you get 7 Months Free Line Rental

3. Nokia 6230i + Bluetooth for 0.00 when you connect to O2 O2 100 .With this offer you get 5 months free + bluetooth

4. Motorola V3 + Bluetooth Headset for 0.00 when you connect to O2 O2 200 .With this offer you get 7 Months At £0.99p + Bluetooth

5.Motorola V3 + Bluetooth Headset for 0.00 when you connect to O2 O2 100 .With this offer you get 7 months Free Line Rental + Bluetooth


Cheers

[dmorison]

It looks like you're in luck - the system generating this feed is apparently combing fields from a database with "standard" text to make an English language description.

The way I would go about this would be to use a sequence of explode() calls on the known text; (which splits the text into an array); use the first element as the field that you're looking for, and the second as the input to the next itteration. Here's sort of how it would work:

<?php
  $fields = array();  
  $record = array();  
  // start with the initial description in fields[1] for consistency  
  $fields[1] = "Sony Eric. K750i for 0.00 when you connect to Orange Off Peak 1000 Crossnet .With this offer you get &pound;160 Cashback";
  // get handset  
  $fields = explode("for ",$fields[1]);
  $record["handset"] = trim($fields[0]);
  // get price
  $fields = explode("when you connect to ",$fields[1]);
  $record["price"] = trim($fields[0]);         
  // get tariff
  $fields = explode(".With this offer you get ",$fields[1]);
  $record["tariff"] = trim($fields[0]);  
  // get bounty (which is what's left, if anything)
  $record["bounty"] = trim($fields[1]);      
  // display the extracted record
  print_r($record);  
?>

In the above script, you end up with $record holding an associative array of the fields parsed out of the description. print_r() is a built in PHP function to display the contents of such an array. The above code outputs something like this:

Array
(
[handset] => Sony Eric. K750i
[price] => 0.00
[tariff] => Orange Off Peak 1000 Crossnet
[bounty] => £160 Cashback
)

All you need to do now is turn the above code into a function which accepts the description as input and returns $record and you should be in business. If you don't have the PHP code to read your source file line by line there are plenty of examples on fgets() and fgetcsv() pages at php.net. Please note that it will be quite easy to fool the above example code; so you would be wise to include validation on the output to ensure that it makes sense before use.