Crossreferencing data markers to web pages

Tips and Techniques example from a Well House Consultants training course
More on Tips and Techniques [link]

This example is described in the following article(s):
• Crossrefering documents with uniqueness and inconsistency issues - PHP proof of concept demo - [link]

If you're searching for a page where you can try this code, select here

This example references the following resources:
http://www.wellho.net/pix/$imgname
http://www.wellho.net/demo/robert

Source code: ppq.php Module: H312


<?php

/* Proof of concept demo ...

Match all patterns line (COPY 33/23/44) in a data stream, and produce a
unique list of all those used, with a list of the places they're used.
Patterns are "human edited" so may contain spurious spacing, leading zeros
and all that sort of thing.

*/

# Function to convert elements of a reference into a standard form

function canize($source,$k) {
        # called as follows: $canonic = canize($gotten,$k);
        # Reduce numbers to next integer down (also strip lead zeros)
        $val1 = floor($source[2][$k]);
        $val2 = floor($source[3][$k]);
        $val3 = floor($source[4][$k]);
        # Force key characters to upper case
        $star = strtoupper($source[1][$k]);
        # Rebuild Canonical reference
        $canon = "($star $val1/$val2/$val3)";
        return $canon;
        }

# Set up the regular expression to be easy to follow!
# ---------------------------------------------------

# A 4 letter word in capitals, to be captured
$word4c = '\s*([A-Z]{4})\s*';
# White Space
$spaces = '\s+';
# A number - may have a decimal point and digits thereafter, to be captured
$floatc = '\s*(\d+(?:\.\d*)?)\s*';

# Set up an array of arrays to gather all references
$gather = array();
$im_desc = array();

# Find all the matches
# --------------------

foreach (file("robert") as $line) {
        if (preg_match_all("!\( $word4c $spaces $floatc / $floatc / $floatc \)!x",
                $line,$gotten)) {
                # print $line; # Would print matched line
                for ($k=0; $k<count($gotten[0]); $k++) {
                        # print ($gotten[0][$k]."\n"); # Identify each match

# Canonicalise each match (i.e. reduce to standard form removing human variance)
                        $canonic = canize($gotten,$k);
                        $parts = explode("\t",$line);
# Store image description too
                        $dt = explode("(",$parts[1]);
                        $im_desc[$parts[0]] = $dt[0];
# Is this a new reference?  If so, create an array member to hold all its matches
                        if (! is_array($gather[$canonic])) {
                                $gather[$canonic] = array();
                                }
# Store crossreference (image name in this case) into appropriate array member
                        array_push($gather[$canonic],$parts[0]);
                }
        }
}

# We now have a table of all the matches. We can sort it and produce a
# result matrix for inclusion in a web page!

ksort($gather);
$html = "";
foreach (array_keys($gather) as $current_ref) {
        $html .= "<tr valign=top><td>$current_ref</td><td>";
        foreach ($gather[$current_ref] as $imgname) {
                $html .= "<a href=http://www.wellho.net/pix/$imgname target=z>";
                $html .= "$imgname";
                $html .= "</a>";
                $html .= " - \"$im_desc[$imgname]\"<br>";
                }
        $html .= "</td></tr>";
        }

# -----------  In a real application the template (following) would
# -----------  be separated out to keep the look and feel apart from
# -----------  the business logic!

?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Finding all references within a data source</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Finding References</h1>

Scenario - we have a volume of data records that contains numerous
references of the form (XXXX DDD/DDD/DD) where XXXX are capital
letters and DD and DDD are digits. We want to find all those
references and list them, with the data key with which they are
associated.   Some of the references may be duplicates, some
records may have multiple references, and as the refernces may
be human edited that are liable to be varied a bit - for example
we could find the number 16 represented as 16, 16.0, 16. and
even 0016.<br><br>

<b>Here are the RESULTS ... you can see the source code from links
at the base of this page. The data is
<a href=http://www.wellho.net/demo/robert>here</a></b><br>
<table><?= $html ?></table>
<br>
</body>
</html>

Learn about this subject

This module and example are covered on the following public courses:
* PHP Techniques
* Intermediate PHP - weekend course / hobby / club / leisure users
* PHP Programming
* Learning to program in PHP
Also available on on site courses for larger groups

Books covering this topic

Yes. We have over 700 books in our library. Books covering PHP are listed here and when you've selected a relevant book we'll link you on to Amazon to order.

Other Examples

This example comes from our "Tips and Techniques" training module. You'll find a description of the topic and some other closely related examples on the "Tips and Techniques" module index page.

Full description of the source code

You can learn more about this example on the training courses listed on this page, on which you'll be given a full set of training notes.

Many other training modules are available for download (for limited use) from our download centre under an Open Training Notes License.

Other resources

• Our Solutions centre provides a number of longer technical articles.
• Our Opentalk forum archive provides a question and answer centre.
• The Horse's mouth provides a daily tip or thought.
• Further resources are available via the resources centre.
• All of these resources can be searched through through our search engine
• And there's a global index here.

Web site author

This web site is written and maintained by Well House Consultants.

Purpose of this website

This is a sample program, class demonstration or answer from a training course. It's main purpose is to provide an after-course service to customers who have attended our public private or on site courses, but the examples are made generally available under conditions described below.

Conditions of use

Past attendees on our training courses are welcome to use individual examples in the course of their programming, but must check the examples they use to ensure that they are suitable for their job. Remember that some of our examples show you how not to do things - check in your notes. Well House Consultants take no responsibility for the suitability of these example programs to customer's needs.

This program is copyright Well House Consultants Ltd. You are forbidden from using it for running your own training courses without our prior written permission. See our page on courseware provision for more details.

Any of our images within this code may NOT be reused on a public URL without our prior permission. For Bona Fide personal use, we will often grant you permission provided that you provide a link back. Commercial use on a website will incur a license fee for each image used - details on request.