#Biting the bullet code
#Biting the bullet crack

Last night I bit the bullet and stepped out of my comfort zone. And the result was a 2-line function that works! But it took much less time than I had anticipated. So I bit the bullet and returned to RegEx. Six functions? And I wasn’t even done yet? Return to RegEx The good news is that within an hour, I had created a chain of six PHP scripts, each performing its own dedicated task leading to the goal of assessing whether a form field entry like 12 15/16 is a valid measurement entry. I wasn’t only in my comfort zone, but I was in the zone. I started coding in PHP using those string functions. Friedl is the seminal work) and revisit my bookmarked online tutorials or I could return to my comfort zone.

#Biting the bullet crack

What I Did Fight the temptation!Īs I started designing the solution for the free-form measurement fields last night, I initially fought the temptation to stay in my PHP comfort zone, and I set out to solve the challenge with regular expressions.īut after a couple of initial frustrating attempts with RegEx, I once again found myself at that familiar crossroads: I could either crack out the books ( Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E.F. And because I’ve been successful in using PHP to accomplish many of the things for which RegEx is well-suited (actually, better-suited), I have usually - in the interest of exigency - opted to postpone my RegEx education to another time and go the PHP route. I’m not afraid to admit I have found the language intimidating. The vocabulary and grammar of RegEx are nothing like those of any programming language I’ve ever used before. That language is called… Regular Expressions (RegEx) I couldn’t ignore the fact that there’s another language out there - a language that was created for exactly the kind of challenge these free-form measurement fields posed, a language I’ve played with and even used a little over the last few years, a language I’ve resolved several times to master but haven’t yet.

#Biting the bullet code

I was supremely confident that I could code a series of custom PHP functions, utilizing the built-in string functions, to accomplish my objective.īut I couldn’t escape a nagging thought. PHP has a number of powerful string functions that can parse and evaluate and manipulate free-form text, and I’ve used these many, many times over the years in situations similar to the present one. I know the language pretty well, if I do say so myself. So I needed to write code that accepts only valid measurement entries and throws an error otherwise. But anything cannot go when it comes time for the order to be submitted. You don’t have to be a programmer to understand the validation challenge this decision created. So we decided I’d build these form fields as free-form text fields. My client’s customers (people in the building trades) have been submitting orders using paper and Excel versions of the form for years, and they are accustomed to entering such measurements like this: Several of the form fields accept measurements in inches and fractions of an inch. I was working on an online order form for a manufacturer of wooden shutters.

I stepped out of my comfort zone to try a new (for me) kind of solution to a common work problem.