Address filter with PHP using regex

I developed a PHP function to get a not formatted address and split it in a street name and number.

Following are some patterns of received addresses

• StreetName Number

• SrtreetName, Number

• Number StreetName

• Number-Number StreetName

• StreetName, Number, Complement

• StreetName Number/Number

• StreetName Number - ZipCode (ZipCode could be ignored)

• StreetName (without number)

I'm using regex to identify the pattern and then splitting it. Here is the function (the code is commented for better understanding):

```
NULL,
'number'=>NULL,
'complement'=>NULL);
//firstly, erase spaces of the strings
$addressWithoutSpace = str_replace(' ', '', $address);
//discover the pattern using regex
if(preg_match('/^([0-9.-])+(.)*$/',$addressWithoutSpace) === 1) {
//here, the numbers comes first and then the information about the street
$info1 = preg_split('/[[:alpha:]]/', $addressWithoutSpace);
$info2 = preg_split('/[0-9.-]/', $address);
$return['number'] = $info1[0];
$return['street'] = end($info2);
}
elseif(preg_match('/^([[:alpha:]]|[[:punct:]])+(.)*$/',$addressWithoutSpace) === 1) {
//here, I have a alpha-numeric word in the first part of the address
if(preg_match('/^(.)+([[:punct:]])+(.)([0-9.-])$/',$addressWithoutSpace) === 1) {
if(preg_match('/,/',$addressWithoutSpace) === 1) {
//have one or more comma and ending with the number
$info1 = explode(",", $address);
$return['number'] = trim(preg_replace('/([^0-9-.])/', ' ', end($info1)));//the last element of the array is the number
array_pop($info1);//pop the number from array
$return['street'] = str_replace(",", "",implode(" ",$info1));//the rest of the string is the street name
}
else {

Looking very quickly, it seems like a frail code.

Still, it works as expected.

But I saw a few things to improve:

• You called your function getInfoAddress().

It sounds like it wil fetch the address somewhere, but that isn't the case...

The address is being parsed. A name like parseAddress() seems better.

• But, your function casing is wrong, in my opinion.

PHP isn't case-sensitive regarding function names.

If you write parseaddress(), you may have problems in the future, if you need to change something.

My recommendation goes on parse_address()

• Be explicit regarding your regular expressions.

Avoid this: /^([[:alpha:]]|[[:punct:]])+(.)*$/
Be explicit. I have no idea what punct means. It is ponctuation?

-
You over-use preg_match.

You have this line:

if (preg_match('/,/',$addressWithoutSpace) === 1){

You should use strpos() for this:

if (strpos($addressWithoutSpace, ',') !== false){

This will improve the performance by quite a bit.

-
Please, don't mix Portuguese with English.

Your $endereco variable should have other name.

Please, only and only give English names to your variables.

Everybody will thank you.

-
Right on top, you "normalize" your input:

$addressWithoutSpace = str_replace(' ', '', $endereco);

But you use that $endereco variable everywhere. Maybe it was by mistake?

-
Avoid closing the PHP tag on a file that only has PHP code

This will avoid frustrations due to a forgotten whitespace after the closing tag.

Many services, like Github, add a newline to the end.

PHP automatically ignores 1 and only 1 whitespace after ?>, but not more.

If you leave 1 more newline by mistake, you can seriously break stuff everywhere.

Just remove the ?> at the end.

StackExchange Code Review Q#114397, answer score: 5