Question: Wildcards

[Markus Nörenberg]

Hi,
Is it possible to use wildcards?
Sth. like this: "array.value.*.array.value"

Thank you

[Colin O'Dell]

No, unfortunately this library doesn't directly support searching with wildcards. But it shouldn't be too hard to implement something like that yourself :)

For example, you could split that path by the * to first get all the values at array.value, and then iterate through those to see if any match the rest of the path.

I doubt this library would add native support for wildcards since virtually all operations are designed to operate on a single fixed path (not multiple paths at once).

[Curzio Della Santa]

One operation that could support wildcard without changing the whole design is the remove.

This is really useful for the scope which I'm using the library:
remove specific keys before serialization of data for a comparison before/after.

I've written a small extension to the remove:

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function remove(string $key): void
    {
        $currentValue =& $this->data;
        $keyPath = self::keyToPathArray($key);

        $endKey = array_pop($keyPath);
        foreach ($keyPath as $currentKey) {
            if ($currentKey === '*') { /** @todo Add is_iterable($currentValue) in the condition? */
                foreach (array_keys($currentValue) as $concreteKey) {
                    // Replace first occurrence of .*. with the concrete key
                    // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1252693/using-str-replace-so-that-it-only-acts-on-the-first-match
                    $this->remove(implode(sprintf('.%s.', $concreteKey), explode('.*.', $key, 2)));
                }
            }

            if (!isset($currentValue[$currentKey])) {
                return;
            }
            $currentValue =& $currentValue[$currentKey];
        }
        unset($currentValue[$endKey]);
    }

In my scenario this is enough, but for your library you should adapt the code for:

• Multiple separators e.g. use for the recursion

   $this->remove(
       preg_replace(
           sprintf('[%1$s]\*[%1$s]', implode('', self::DELIMITERS)), // If '-' would be a delimiter, need to be last
           sprintf('.%s.', $concreteKey),
           $key,
           1
       )
   );

• Keys beginning with wildcard
• Keys ending with wildcard (which makes no sense .. but you never know)
• Custom wildcard character
• etc.