PHP library for parsing Google-like search operators?

Question

I want to create a PHP search function, but using Google-like operators. For instance:

these words "this phrase" location:"Los Angeles" operator:something

It's important that operators like location: support values with spaces in them (hence the quotes in this example), so I can't just to a split or use standard tokens. I'd imagine someone at some point has created a library for doing this, but I can't find any.

Or if it doesn't require a library, a nice way to do this would be good.

It's just the parsing of a search query that I need; i.e. from the query above it would be fine to get an array consisting of:

[0] => these
[1] => words
[2] => "this phrase"
[3] => location:"Los Angeles"
[4] => operator:something

From that I can build a search function for the database.

Answer 1

You can start with str_getcsv() and use a space as the delimiter, but you may have to preprocess the location & operator to handle the quotes in that particular case.

<?php
$str = 'these words "this phrase" location:"Los Angeles" operator:something';

// preprocess the cases where you have colon separated definitions with quotes
// i.e. location:"los angeles"
$str = preg_replace('/(\w+)\:"(\w+)/', '"${1}:${2}', $str);

$str = str_getcsv($str, ' ');

var_dump($str);
?>

output

array(5) {
  [0]=>
  string(5) "these"
  [1]=>
  string(5) "words"
  [2]=>
  string(11) "this phrase"
  [3]=>
  string(20) "location:Los Angeles"
  [4]=>
  string(18) "operator:something"
}