Question 40650 in PHP Question posted in
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Regex correctly recognise SKU in title given some specific rules – PHP

I have a bunch of product titles, from which I need to extract the SKU that’s within them.

So take the following titles as an example:

  • 258 Game of Thrones
  • E457 Pokemon
  • 293A Wool Bed cover
  • 572 C Steel frame whatever

So in the above examples, the SKUs are 258, E457, 293A and 572 C respectively.

Generally, the SKU is either all numbers (mainly 3 or 4 characters long), or letter E followed again by 3-4 numbers, or a 3-4 digit number, followed by a single letter, or by a single space and a single letter.

So I came up with this pattern that seems to work well in identifying all of the above cases: /^E?d+ ?.?/

https://regex101.com/r/I7kkDP/2

Then, there are some totally messed up titles, which have the SKU somewhere in the middle… From what I saw, these cases are rare, and when they happen it’s only numbers, so no starting E, or ending single letter. Two examples of this are the following:

  • Decorative pillow / Set with bed covers 2456 55Χ55cm
  • Pillow 207 45 Χ 65 cm

Fortunately, the SKU in these rare cases is the first whole number that’s met in the title.

So, what I need is preg_replace to fix the above totally messed up titles, so that then my pattern can correctly extract the SKU.

Thank you very much in advance.

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    Use word-boundaries (b) to delineate the SKU from any other characters, then just check for your defining characters.

    The boundaries will ensure you don’t falsely match 258 G from 258 Game of Thrones.

    $rx = '/bE?d{3,}( ?[A-Z])?b/';
if (preg_match($rx, $title, $matches)) {
    [ $sku ] = $matches;
}

    https://3v4l.org/rCEqD

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  2. 0

    I can answer the RegEx pattern part: (E?d{3,4} ?[A-Z]?(?=s)), tested at https://regex101.com with the following text block:

    258 Game of Thrones E457 Pokemon
293A Wool Bed cover 572 C Steel frame whatever
258 Game of Thrones
E457 Pokemon
293A Wool Bed cover
572 C Steel frame whatever
Decorative pillow / Set with bed covers 2456 55Χ55cm
Pillow 207 45 Χ 65 cm
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