Agfdhyk

I am looking to loop through existing .vtt files and read the cue data into a database.

The format of the .vtt files are:

WEBVTT FILE



line1

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000

‘Stuff’



line2

00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:20.000

Other stuff

Example with 2 lines



line3

00:00:20.00 --> 00:00:30.000

Example with only 2 digits in milliseconds



line4

00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:40.000

Different stuff



00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:50.000

Example without a head line

Originally I was trying to use ^ and $ to be quite regimented with the lines along the lines of: /^(w*)$^(d{2}):(d{2}):(d{2}).(d{2,3}) --> (d{2}):(d{2}):(d{2}).(d{2,3})$^(.+)$/ims but I struggled to get this working in the regex checker and resorted to using s to deal with line start/ends.

Currently I am using the following regex: /(.*)s(d{2}):(d{2}):(d{2}).(d{2,3}) --> (d{2}):(d{2}):(d{2}).(d{2,3})s(.+)/im

This partially works using online regex checkers like: https://regex101.com/r/mmpObk/3 (this example does not pick up multi-line subtitles, but does get the first line which at this point is good enough for my purpose as all subtitles are currently 1 liners). However if I put this into php (preg_match_all("/(.*)s(d{2}):(d{2}):(d{2}).(d{2,3}) --> (d{2}):(d{2}):(d{2}).(d{2,3})s(.+)/mi", $fileData, $matches)) and dump the results I get an array of empty arrays.

What might be different between the online regex and php?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

EDIT---
Below is a dump of $fileData and a dump of $matches:

string(341) "WEBVTT FILE



line1

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000

‘Stuff’



line2

00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:20.000

Other stuff

Example with 2 lines



line3

00:00:20.00 --> 00:00:30.000

Example with only 2 digits in milliseconds



line4

00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:40.000

Different stuff



00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:50.000

Example without a head line"



array(11) {

    [0]=>

        array(0) {}

    [1]=>

        array(0) {}

    [2]=>

        array(0) {}

    [3]=>

        array(0) {}

    [4]=>

        array(0) {}

    [5]=>

        array(0) {}

    [6]=>

        array(0) {}

    [7]=>

        array(0) {}

    [8]=>

        array(0) {}

    [9]=>

        array(0) {}

    [10]=>

        array(0) {}

}

The problem with your regular expression is poor line-ending handling.

You have this at the end: s(.+)/mi.

This only matches 1 whitespace, but newlines can be 1 or 2 whitespaces.

To fix it, you can use R(.+)/mi.

It works on the website because it is normalizing your newlines into Linux-style newlines.

That is, Windows-style newlines are rn (2 characters) and Linux-style are n (1 character).

Alternativelly, you can try this regular expression:

/(?:line(d+)R)?(d{2}(?::d{2}){2}.d{2,3})s*-->s*(d{2}(?::d{2}){2}.d{2,3})R((?:[^rn]|r?n[^rn])*)(?:r?nr?n|$)/i

It looks horrible, but it works.

Note: I'm swapping between R and rn because R matches the literal R inside .

The data is captured like this:

1. Line number (if present)


2. Initial timestamp


3. Final timestamp


4. Multiline text

You can try it on https://regex101.com/r/Yk8iD1/1

You can use the handy code generator tool to generate the following PHP:

$re = '/(?:line(d+)R)?(d{2}(?::d{2}){2}.d{2,3})s*-->s*(d{2}(?::d{2}){2}.d{2,3})R((?:[^rn]|r?n[^rn])*)(?:r?nr?n|$)/i';

$str = 'WEBVTT FILE



line1

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000

‘Stuff’



line2

00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:20.000

Other stuff

Example with 2 lines



line3

00:00:20.00 --> 00:00:30.000

Example with only 2 digits in milliseconds



line4

00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:40.000

Different stuff



00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:50.000

Example without a head line';



preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);



// Print the entire match result

var_dump($matches);

You can test it on http://sandbox.onlinephpfunctions.com/code/7f5362f56e912f3504ed075e7013071059cdee7b