Corpus-tagged Text Converter

A PHP library for converting files tagged with corpus metadata to JSON, PHP, or XML.

History

Corpus linguistics researchers use a markup-like syntax to provide metadata about texts. For consumption by applications, this syntax needs to be converted into a more universal, machine-readable format. The format chosen was JSON.

Basic Usage

The included /demo/index.php file contains a conversion form demonstration.

Make your code aware of the TagConverter class via your favorite method (e.g., use or require)

Then pass a string of text into the class:

$text = TagConverter::json('<MyTag: 123>My tagged text here');
echo $text;
// Returns {"MyTag":"123","text":"My tagged text here"}

$text = TagConverter::php('<MyTag: 123>My tagged text here');
echo $text;
// Returns array('MyTag' => '123', 'text' => 'My tagged text here')

$text = TagConverter::xml('<MyTag: 123>My tagged text here');
echo $text;
// Returns <?xml version="1.0"?><root><MyTag>123</MyTag><text>My tagged text here</text></root>

Expected input format

The corpus style tagging syntax expected by the library is defined as follows:

1. Tags must be wrapped in < and >
2. Tag names and tag values may only alphanumeric characters, spaces, underscores, and hypens.
3. Tag names must be separated from tag values by a :
4. Spaces at the beginning at end of tag names or tag values are ignored; spaces within tag values will be preserved
5. Everything not wrapped in < and > will be considered "text"

Status	Tag Example	Explanation
Good	<MyTag:SomeText>
Good	<My Tag:Some Text>	Spaces in tag names & values OK
Good	< My Tag : Some Text >	Spaces padding tag names & values OK
Good	< My-Tag : Some_Text >	Underscores & hyphens OK
Good	```< My-Tag : Value 1	Value 2 >```
Good	< My-Tag : Value 1 ; Value 2 >	Semicolon separators for multiple values
Bad	< My/Tag : Some:Text >	Other characters not OK

Testing

Unit Tests can be run (after composer install) by executing vendor/bin/phpunit