PHP Match String Pattern and Get Variable

Question

I looked up some reference like this question and this question but could not figure out what I need to do.

What I am trying to do is:

Say, I have two strings:

$str1 = "link/usa";
$str2 = "link/{country}";

Now I want to check if this the pattern matches. If they match, I want the value of country to be set usa.

$country = "usa";

I also want it to work in cases like:

$str1 = "link/usa/texas";
$str2 = "link/{country}/{place}";

Maybe integers as well. Like match every braces and provide the variable with value. (And, yes better performance if possible)

I cannot get a work around since I am very new to regular expresssions. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It will give you results as expected

$str1 = "link/usa";
$str2 = "link/{country}";

if(preg_match('~link/([a-z]+)~i', $str1, $matches1) && preg_match('~link/{([a-z]+)}~i', $str2, $matches2)){
    $$matches2[1] = $matches1[1];
    echo $country;
}

Note: Above code will just parse alphabets, you can extend characters in range as per need.

UPDATE:

You can also do it using explode, see example below:

$val1 = explode('/', $str1);
$val2 = explode('/', $str2);
${rtrim(ltrim($val2[1],'{'), '}')} = $val1[1];
echo $country;

UPDATE 2

$str1 = "link/usa/texas/2/";
$str2 = "/link/{country}/{city}/{page}";

if(preg_match_all('~/([a-z0-9]+)~i', $str1, $matches1) && preg_match_all('~{([a-z]+)}~i', $str2, $matches2)){

    foreach($matches2[1] as $key => $matches){
        $$matches = $matches1[1][$key];
    }
    echo $country; 
    echo '<br>';
    echo $city;
    echo '<br>';
    echo $page;
}

Answer 2

I don't see the point to use the key as variable name when you can built an associative array that will be probably more handy to use later and that avoids to write ugly dynamic variable names ${the_name_of_the_var_${of_my_var_${of_your_var}}}:

$str1 = "link/usa/texas";
$str2 = "link/{country}/{place}";

function combine($pattern, $values) {
    $keys = array_map(function ($i) { return trim($i, '{}'); },
                      explode('/', $pattern));
    $values = explode('/', $values);

    if (array_shift($keys) == array_shift($values) && count($keys) &&
        count($keys) == count($values))
        return array_combine($keys, $values);
    else throw new Exception ("invalid format");
}

print_r(combine($str2, $str1));