What is the strtok() method in PHP?

Overview

The strtok() method splits a string value at the points where an indicated delimiter is found in the string. Just like the explode() method, it splits a string into separate smaller chunks. But unlike the explode() method, it behaves differently, especially in handling its delimiter.

For example, a string ＄A = "-man--knows". Now, strtok(＄A,"-") will produce "man", "-" and "knows" on successive calls, ignoring the "-" at the start of the string and the "-" where they appear side by side. The explode() method will produce an array, ["-","man","-","knows"].

When a string is tokenized using the strcoll() method, if we don’t iterate over process while strcoll() is still true, we’ll only get a single token even where there is multiple. Refer to the output on line 5 and line 13 in the code snippet below.

Syntax

The following is the syntax for strtok():

strcoll($token_source,$delimiter)

Parameters

  • ＄token_source: This is the string value from which tokens will be created.
  • ＄delimiter: This is a string value, which will serve as the point at which the ＄token_source will be split to form the tokens.

Return value

This function returns a string value if the tokens were created successfully. However, a boolean false will be returned if there is no token to create.

Example

<?php

$token_source = "This word will be tokenized at spaces";



//createing tokens off $token at "t"

$token = strtok($token_source, "t"); //output=>This word would be

echo($token) ."<br/>";



//loop through $tok, to return token at each iteration

while ($token !== false) {



echo "The token in this iteration is -: $token <br/>";

    //split $token at whitespace points

    $token = strtok(" ");

}



// 

$token1  = strtok('/creating tokens', '/');

$token2  = strtok('creating tokens');

var_dump($token1, $token2);

?>

Explanation

  • Line 2: We declare a variable ＄token_source that will serve as the string from which tokens will be created.

  • Line 5: We use the strtok() method to create tokens using "t" as the token separator.

  • Lines 9–4: We start and end a while loop block. Inside of this loop, we print the value of using the strtok() method on the variable ＄token_source successive in order to get all the available tokens.

  • Line 17: We use the strtok() method on a string, which will return a token, while on line 18 using the same string, but omitting the delimiter it will return false.

  • Line 19: We use the var_dump method to display the output from lines 17 and 18.

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