在PHP中将描述的字符串转换为数组路径

Question

I'd appreciate any help I could get with this — I've been scouring stack overflow and couldn't find anything that directly related with what I'm trying to accomplish.

Issue: I'm trying to update a specific name/value pair in a JSON file, and I'm trying to do it by sending specific parameters through an AJAX call to a PHP file. Two of the parameters are the path (delineated with hyphens) to the name, and the value that I'm swapping in.

A small portion of the JSON:

{
  "character" : 
  {             
    "name" : "Foo",
    "species" : "Bar",
  }
}

Using this JSON as an example, I'm trying to update a specific array value, such as:

$char['character']['name']

I'm passing a variable to the PHP file with the path information, such as:

updater.php?char=character-name&val=Newname  

Is there a way to convert the string "character-name" (or any string for that matter with a particular delineation) to the path in an Array, like $char['character']['name']?

Answer 1

To not only read the value at the specified path, but also update the json, I would suggest something like

<?php
function json_replace_path($json, $path, $newValue)
{
    $json = json_decode($json);

    $pathArray = explode('-', $path);
    $currentElement = $json;

    foreach ($pathArray as $part)
    {
        $currentElement = &$currentElement->$part;
    }

    $currentElement = $newValue;

    return json_encode($json);
}

$json = '{"character":{"name":"Foo","species":"Bar","other":{"first_name":"Jeff","last_name":"Atwood"}}}';
echo json_replace_path($json, 'character-name', 'new name') . "
";
echo json_replace_path($json, 'character-species', 'new species') . "
";
echo json_replace_path($json, 'character-other-last_name', 'Bridges') . "
";

Does not support JSON including arrays, though.