Fixing invalid XML for conversion to JSON

Question

I am trying to convert an XML document to JSON, but I have a situation where there are two different data types and one is removing the other to fix this. I tried a regular expression, in which I got most of the way there.

My question is, is there a better way to fix this than using a regex? And how can I fix this?

Original XML

<StartMonthGroup>
   <StartMonth withdrawn="false"><MajorOfferRound>12 Dec 2013</MajorOfferRound>Sep 2013
   </StartMonth>
   <StartMonth withdrawn="false">Jan 2014</StartMonth>
   <StartMonth withdrawn="false">May 2014</StartMonth>
</StartMonthGroup>

New XML

<StartMonthGroup>
  <MajorOfferRound>12 Dec 2013</MajorOfferRound>
  <StartMonth withdrawn="false">Sep 2013</StartMonth>
  <StartMonth withdrawn="false">Jan 2014</StartMonth>
  <StartMonth withdrawn="false">May 2014</StartMonth>
</StartMonthGroup>

PHP Code

public static function fixDates($data)
{
    if (preg_match("/<MajorOfferRound>/", $data)) {
        $data = preg_replace("/<StartMonth withdrawn=\"false\"><MajorOfferRound>/", "<MajorOfferRound>", $data);
        $data = preg_replace("/<\/MajorOfferRound>/", "</MajorOfferRound><StartMonth withdrawn=\"false\">", $data);

        $data = preg_replace("/<StartMonth withdrawn=\"true\"><MajorOfferRound>/", "<MajorOfferRound>", $data);
        $data = preg_replace("/<\/MajorOfferRound>/", "</MajorOfferRound><StartMonth withdrawn=\"true\">", $data);


        return $data;
    } else {
        return $data;
    }
}

did you try this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8830599/php-convert-xml-to-json — harikrish, May 26 '14 at 07:22
yeh basically what i already have its just avoiding having two data types — Ardenexal, May 26 '14 at 07:28

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 26 '14 at 09:01

If you've decided regex is the best approach you could do all the replacing with in one shot.

$regex = '/(<S\w{9}\sw\w{8}=\"\w{4,5}\">)(\W{1,2}M\w{14}>)(.*)(<\/M\w{14}>)(.*)\W+(<\/S\w{9}>)/im'; 

$result = preg_replace($regex, "$2$3$4\n   $1$5$6", $data);

Here it is in action: http://ideone.com/RuoGtL

Fixing invalid XML for conversion to JSON

1 Answers1